Speaker
Description
A growing cohort of multimedia consumers requires advanced accessibility solutions due to diverse sensory and cognitive needs such as age-related hearing loss, noise-induced hearing impairment, or congenital auditory conditions. Ensuring that emerging media technologies such as virtual-reality and augmented-reality (VR/AR) remain inclusive has become a critical requirement for broad-scale technological adoption.Concurrently, the development of immersive Six Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) audio technologies represents a shift in media consumption. Unlike traditional static media playback, 6DoF audio gives listeners the freedom to navigate within a virtual acoustic scene. However, this interactivity introduces substantial challenges for the traditional authoring of accessible audio experiences during content production. The low-latency requirements of real-time 6DoF audio systems preclude complex post-processing approaches, e.g., clarity enhancement in reverberant scenes containing multiple sound sources.To enable accessible immersive audio while satisfying latency constraints, the recently finalized ISO MPEG-I Immersive Audio Standard (ISO/IEC 23090-4) integrates several accessibility tools directly within its 6DoF audio renderer.This contribution examines these integrated accessibility features within MPEG-I and demonstrates how 6DoF audio rendering can be individualized to foster more equitable experiences for individuals with diverse sensory and cognitive needs. Results from a listening test alongside feedback from a usability study demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution.