Deloitte’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications Predictions 2015 is a wide-ranging report that looks at the future of drones, 3D printing, smartphones and printed books among other subjects. It finds that ‘millennials’ (which it defines as 18-34 year-olds) in the US and Canada spend around US$750 a year on media content, which includes $40 on subscription VOD services such as Netflix. The report also predicts that short-form content (i.e. short video clips), which is sometimes claimed to be the future of television, will account for less than 3% of all viewing on all screens in 2015. The remainder will be long-form viewing (full-length TV programs and videos).
As VOD services continue to gain in popularity, the lack of accessibility features on them has increasingly become an issue for people with disabilities. While legislation has been introduced in the US which means that any video broadcast on TV with captions must also be captioned when distributed over the internet, levels of captioning on VOD services in the UK, Australia and other countries remain low, and audio description is virtually non-existent.
In 2013, Media Access Australia released a report, ‘Captioning on Video on Demand Services: It’s Time for Australia to Catch Up’, which looked at the situation here and internationally. We will be releasing an updated report early in 2015.
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