Blind or vision impaired

U.S. cable provider Comcast, in partnership with NBC and Descriptive Video Works (DVW), will mark the International Day of People with Disability (3 December) by televising the Broadway musical The Wiz Live! with audio description, providing the first accessible live entertainment TV program in the U.S. for people who are blind or vision impaired.

Streaming live events on the internet allows people who cannot attend to experience the performance. A more recent innovation is to include accessibility services to allow people with disabilities to also enjoy the show.

A basic rule of research is that if you want to know what somebody thinks about your product, the best thing to do is ask them. It is surprising how little that approach is taken with access services, including audio description for blind people, which makes recent initiatives by Pixar in the US and Ericsson in Australia all the more welcome.

The call for improvement to digital accessibility for people with disabilities moved to Parliament House in Canberra with a call for significant change to happen by 2017, which is the 25^th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act.