British online video provider improves accessibility

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Thursday, 12 December 2013 14:25pm

The video on demand provider YouView has announced a range of improvements to make its services easier to use for blind and vision impaired people, as well as those with a motor skill or cognitive impairment.

The changes include a new zoom function that works with all aspects of the program guide, and which the company described as a UK first. The free YouView app for iOS and Android now has text-to-speech navigation of the program guide, while the app is also now available in a high-contrast version.

Users with motor skill impairment will be able to navigate through the program guide using any USB-connected keyboard, or the accessible keyboards Monster 2 and Clevy. YouView has also developed navigation screens which work with Grid 2 software, allowing severely disabled people to navigate through the program guide using a single button. YouView had previously demonstrated its commitment to accessibility by making it possible to switch its program guide to high contrast black and white, aiding vision impaired users.

Susie Buckridge, YouView’s Director of Product, said, “We hope these accessibility updates will give a wider range of customers the means to discover great TV and radio, by providing the tools to make our user interface and mobile applications easy to navigate.”

For more information, see this articleon the Advanced Television website.

The lack of accessibility on video on demand services has been of increasing concern to disability advocates in recent years. Problems include lack of captions and audio description on content, inaccessible program guides, and lack of text-to-speech functionality on equipment.Earlier this year, Media Access Australia released a report, Captioning on Video on Demand: It’s Time to Catch Up, which highlights the lack of captioning on most services available here.   


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