"You Meet an Audience Where They’re at, Not Where You Want Them To Be”: Rethinking Media Accessibility and Design with Media Practitioners

Accessibility in screen media is typically framed as services for discrete user groups (e.g. visually impaired users), with HCI work largely focusing on post-production and playback interventions rather than the wider production ecology. We report findings from interviews and workshops with media practitioners spanning pre-production, production, and post-production, surfacing a gap between practitioners’ orientation toward meeting audiences where they are and the organisational conditions that systematically prevent this. Our thematic analysis shows how access is (a) authored into storytelling and planning when time and creative ownership allow, (b) undermined by fragmented responsibility and remit boundaries across handovers, and (c) constrained by workflow realities and product economics that shape what can be delivered, maintained, and scaled. We also surface frictions between creative intent and end-user comprehension, and between device-level personalisation and source-level authorship. We contribute a design agenda for integrated media accessibility, including principles for making space and time for access, supporting inclusive viewing, and enabling accountable content creation and automation.