Visual Attention Split

The cognitive challenge of needing to divide visual focus between two or more sources of information simultaneously. For deaf and hard of hearing people, visual attention split is a pervasive accessibility barrier: they must look at captions or a sign language interpreter while also watching the speaker's face, presentation materials, or their physical environment. This challenge is particularly acute in mobile contexts where navigating obstacles, traffic, and terrain competes with the need to read captions or speechread. Visual attention split is a key design consideration for captioning technologies, with head-mounted displays and augmented reality approaches specifically aimed at reducing it by placing captions within the user's natural line of sight.