  Short videos on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts
(i.e. short-form videos) have become a primary source of information and
entertainment. Many short-form videos are inaccessible to blind and low vision
(BLV) viewers due to their rapid visual changes, on-screen text, and music or
meme-audio overlays. In our formative study, 7 BLV viewers who regularly
watched short-form videos reported frequently skipping such inaccessible
content. We present ShortScribe, a system that provides hierarchical visual
summaries of short-form videos at three levels of detail to support BLV viewers
in selecting and understanding short-form videos. ShortScribe allows BLV users
to navigate between video descriptions based on their level of interest. To
evaluate ShortScribe, we assessed description accuracy and conducted a user
study with 10 BLV participants comparing ShortScribe to a baseline interface.
When using ShortScribe, participants reported higher comprehension and provided
more accurate summaries of video content.
