Making sure television is accessible to older people and people with disabilities

Minister and manufacturers adopt targets for equipment accessibility

Friday, 03 October 2008 16:10

Both the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and the European digital technology industry have made clear statements setting out 2009 targets for accessibility of digital television equipment.

In July 2008, while announcing the results of the Digital Terrestrial Television trial, Minister Eamon Ryan said:

For digital television to succeed as a replacement for the analogue services it needs to be accessible to all. It must be simple to set up and user friendly, offer more high quality services and channels and the receiver equipment must be affordable and easy to obtain. My Department will be working to ensure manufacturers and retailers work in tandem with RTÉ and the new BCI licensee to ensure that a range of digital television receivers are available in advance of the autumn 2009 launch date.

In July 2007, EICTA, the European digital technology industry association, published a document outlining a recommended set of Digital TV e-Accessibility requirements (PDF, 124Kb) that it deemed would be feasible for manufacturers to adopt by 2009 as an industry "self-commitment". The recommendations cover a wide range of functional and user interface requirements.

Both of these commitments are to be welcomed, although the Minister's statement is short on detail and the industry targets do not go far enough. For example, they do not include voice output of menus and other on-screen text, which is essential for blind viewers. The consumer equipment industry has always argued that voice output was not technically feasible, although RNIB have recently demonstrated prototype set top boxes with this capability, proving that it can be done and at a reasonable cost.