Seeing the music can animated lyrics provide access to the emotional content in music for people who are deaf or hard of hearing?

Over the last 30 years, the deaf and hard of hearing communities have relied on closed captioning for access to television content. However, closed captioning provides limited access to non-speech audio such as music, sound effects and speech prosody. Music in closed captions is often represented by only its title and/or a music note symbol, providing little to no information to the viewer about the intended effect or emotion of the music. The study explores ways to use animated text to represent the emotional elements of music. Viewer reaction was examined and their understanding of two songs presented with animated text lyrics. Overall, there was a positive reaction to the animated lyrics and they did not interfere with readability or understanding of the content. Participants also expressed a desire for complementary visual imagery to improve the entertainment value of the content.