From Hotline to Podcast: Visually Impaired Audience in Thailand and the Changes in the Audio Media Landscape

Abstract

This research – From Hotline to Podcast: Visually-Impaired Audience in Thailand and the Changes in Audio Media Landscape - was conducted to study the transformations of the media landscape for the visually-impaired audience in Thailand and their directions of behavioral changes in media exposure. This research employed a concurrent-mixed research method. The quantitative method was textual analysis, analyzing the number of accesses to Hotline 1414 and TAB2Read Application during 2012–2023. The qualitative method was presented in the document analysis

The results showed that in 2012, TAB Foundation was supported by NBTC to set up the first specific medium for the visually-impaired audience, Hotline 1414. Three years later, the application TAB2Read was established. With the change in media landscape, the visually-impaired audience is exposed to the application in a positive direction, in contrast to the access to the Hotline 1414. The correlation between the two platforms was found negative correlation in a very strong relation with the Pearson’s Correlation r = -0.916, and with statistical significance of p = 0.000. While it was found that 44% of Thai internet users exposed themselves to podcasts in 2020, falling in the Early Majority area, however, for the visually-impaired audience in Thailand, the graph of the TAB2Read application accessing was still rising as it used to be before. This could reflect that even though almost half of Thai people had their experience with podcasts, there was still no sign of disruption to the TAB2Read application for the visually-impaired audience, in contrast to when the application accessibility was introduced to the previous hotline. However, there was a sign of UGC (User-Generated Content) found with the podcast channels, founded and contributed by the visually-impaired user on the podcast social media platform.