Dreaming of Streaming: video on demand access for blind and vision impaired people

Transcript

16th August 2015

Roberta: Video on demand services are the new media that everyone wants to consume. There are a number of services available in Australia, including some with audio description. With this in mind Vision Australia hosted a consumer webinar Dreaming of Streaming on the 29th July this year from its Sydney corporate offices and Media Access Australia’s CEO Alex Varley was one of the panel members. Welcome Alex.

Alex: Hi there, Roberta.

Roberta: Now tell me a little bit about the background to the webinar and how it was run.

Alex: Well as you said in your introduction, video on demand services and catch up TV, which is where you get to watch the TV online later on, very, very popular services and obviously blind and people with low vision are very interested in those too and they wanted to know all about how do you access them, what has audio description on it so they could watch it. And that general information, because it’s a fairly new concept. The basic webinar was a panel of three of us; so myself and two adaptive technology consultants from Vision Australia. We were answering consumer questions that were coming in live over the hour long webinar that we ran out of Vision Australia’s offices.

Roberta: So what were the main topics that people were interested in?

Alex: Well not surprisingly the first one was “well what stuff can I watch? What’s got audio description on it?” And in that case the two main services in Australia are ABC’s catch up service and also Netflix. Then of course the other thing they were really interested in was “right, so something like Netflix, is the platform that I’m trying to watch it on actually acceptable or are there some tips and tricks about how to actually get to the stuff I want?”

Roberta: So it seems that being able to access a platform for service was almost as big an issue as providing audio description. So Alex, why do you think this is?

Alex: Well as you would be very aware Roberta, a key issue for blind people is they want independence and independence means in this case that they don’t have to get a family member or a friend to help them actually find the program that they want to watch and then actually make it work. So what they’re interested in those situations is can I actually search the whole program database to find out which programs have audio description on there and then when I actually identify which program I want to watch, can I turn on the play button, can I control the volume, can I stop it and come back later on when I want to, and all those kinds of things. So a lot of the discussion was around different devices that will help you with that and of course the Apple products were the most accessible. The good news on that is that Netflix is also doing some work on trying to improve its interface, so the platform that you use to actually access it.

Roberta: And the webinar talked about comparisons to other parts of the world. Why is that important?

Alex: That’s a really key issue in this area because if we take, for example, the Netflix product, which is the only subscription based service that has audio description on it, what they do with that is it’s a world-wide service. So they have the same basic platform and then they have just a load content, some of which we get here, which is a little bit different to say other countries. Basically they’re operating on a world market. So for people that remember when Netflix first started, they just announced instantly that they were doing audio description, they’re doing more and more and that’s because as it becomes available in America, which is the home base for Netflix, if that content is being shown in Australia they will put the audio description on there. So what happens in other parts of the world is incredibly important because that feeds through to Australia. There’s a lot of work being done in the US and the UK by consumer advocates trying to improve the levels of audio description and we should get the benefit of that.

Roberta: What was your main message to people about these services?

Alex: Well on a very positive basis I think what you have to do is you’ve got to consume this stuff, so that people know that the audio description services needed, wanted and used, and for sales people from other places like Presto and Stan come knocking on your door and they say “well why don’t you buy our product?” You say, “well when it’s audio described I’ll have a look at it. At the moment I’m buying Netflix because it’s the only one that’s audio described.” With the TV services it’s only the ABC, so channel 9, 7, SBS and 10, if you start doing that I’ll start looking at your things as well. So power of positive actual consumption.

Roberta: Can people access the webinar if they want to?

Alex: Yes. On the Vision Australia website, and if you just put in Dreaming of Streaming to the search engine on there it will come up with the actual webinar, a recording of it, which is a YouTube link, and also transcripts and lots of information about how you actually access these services. So it’s a good resource there on the Vision Australia website.

Roberta: Thank you for all of that today, Alex. I’ve been speaking with Media Access Australia’s CEO, Alex Varley. And if you’d like some more information on audio description and video on demand accessibility you can call Media Access Australia on that great number, (02) 9212 6242 or email info@mediaaccess.org.au and Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.

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