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

RTÉ’s new catch-up TV player not accessible to blind viewers

Friday, 01 May 2009 12:00

Following on from the success of the BBC iPlayer, RTÉ has introduced its own version – the RTE Player, allowing broadband users to catch up on programmes they missed, up to 21 days later. However, visually impaired viewers have found that the new player is not accessible to them.

The player has been launched as a public 'beta test' version, prior to its official launch some time in the future. Múirne Laffan, executive director of RTÉ Publishing said "RTÉ player will enhance our service to existing and new RTE audiences, extending the availability of our programmes". But it seems that this does not currently include RTÉ's vision impaired audience because the Player is not compatible with assistive software such as screen readers.

Users are experiencing difficulties locating programmes, interacting with Player's buttons and getting videos to play. This contrasts sharply with the BBC iPlayer, which was largely accessible when it was launched in December 2007. The BBC brought in accessibility consultants during the design of their player, whereas RTÉ did not, preferring to launch an inaccessible version and fix it later. This is not a good approach to design since retrofitting accessibility is invariably more difficult and expensive than designing it in at the start. Fortunately, some of the most obvious problems, such as buttons without software-readable labels, are quite easy to fix, although this could easily have been done before launch.

TV Access hopes to work with RTÉ in making sure the RTÉ Player is made accessible and future technologies are developed with accessibility in mind, so that people with disabilities are not left behind in the move to digital media.