Digital TV accessibility
Making digital TV equipment and services accessible to the widest audience, including older people and people with disabilities.
Key issues
- Ease of use of digital receivers and remote controls;
- Production and display of subtitles, audio description and Irish Sign Language;
- User control over the visual presentation of on-screen text;
- Spoken output of menus, functions and programme information;
- Packaging, installation and instructions;
- Accessibility of ancillary services such as web-based EPGs.
Benefits
- Maximises the customer base;
- Reduces the number of support calls;
- Creates a better product for extended families;
- Improves the experience of television on mobile devices;
- Increases the overall quality of the user experience;
- Increases social inclusion for older people and people with disabilities.
We're serious about making digital TV accessible. CFIT founded the TV Access coalition, a collaboration between organisations from across the disability, ageing and poverty sectors in Ireland.
CFIT digital TV services
Digital TV accessibility is one of CFIT's core areas of knowledge and expertise. We provide the following services to help you make your equipment and services accessible.
Expert auditing: Have your equipment or services audited for accessibility and usability against best practice standards. Discover where it falls short and how to improve it.
User testing: Have your equipment or services tested by people with disabilities, either at our dedicated user testing facility or in extended field trials in viewers' own homes. Find out how accessible and usable it really is and how to fix any problems.
Consultancy: Get the help you need, when you need it, with a flexible package of ongoing consultancy and support, arranged to suit your needs.
The CFIT User Experience: Meet people with disabilities, see how they use your equipment or services and talk with them about their experiences. The best way to learn what accessibility really means.
NCBI Disability awareness training: NCBI offers disability awareness training for customer service staff.
Accessible information formats: NCBI offers services in the production of information in large print, Braille and audio formats, through its Media Services Centre.
CFIT clients and how we’ve helped them
CFIT and the NCBI Media Services Centre has provided a range of accessibility services in digital television to RTÉ, including audio description production and field based quality testing of audio description broadcasts.
Read more about how we've helped RTÉ evaluate their audio description broadcasts in our RTÉ user testing case study.