The Apple Watch's selling point is that it promotes physical activity while also allowing users to carry out quick actions on the go without having their phones with them, such as:

However, when thinking about accessibility and people who rely on words to understand audio, they cannot exercise the same freedom and flexibility because there is currently no captioning of audio on any watchOS apps.

For this case study, I will be focusing on accessibility while listening to music on watchOS. To propose a solution, we fist need to understand how people with hearing loss hear.

Written cues such as audio transcripts and subtitles can be helpful to people with hearing loss. In the case of music, it makes the most sense to display lyrics to bridge the gap of missed words.

Music is much more than the rythmic noise you hear. It's delicately crafted poetry, where artists cleverly play with words, refer to literature and real world events to communicate feelings. People with hearing loss should be able to access and appreciate details of this art form in their own way.

It was important to consider that the majority of normal hearing users would likely not use lyrics on watchOS, so I designed an additional (three-dot) menu and nested my feature under it.

And so, I chose a vertical three-dot aka. additional options menu, while also considering:

While designing the viewport and layout for displaying the song, I included only the neccessary information and actions that are quick and easily absorbed.

Finally, I ensured a balance between Spotify and Apple's design systems. Made sure to include Apple Watch's default font and 'close' icon, specifically designed for legibility and present on on all watchOS apps.

There's no one interface that will work for everyone, and to make a product accessible to as many users as possible, we need to stop and look between the lines: is there somebody getting left behind?

This feature, objectively may not seem like the most convinient for general users, but for the hard of hearing audience and others for whom this feature is neccessary, would likely use it and feel included. This is just one of the many ways in which Apple Watch's can be used remotely and be accessible for Deaf and Hard of Hearing users.

OVERVIEW

THE PROBLEM

SOLUTION

PROTOTYPE

WHAT I LEARNED

Hearing