Accessibility means building apps that can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of abilities. You can incorporate universal design in your app by approaches such as careful color choices, Voice Guidance capabilities, and ensuring videos include closed captions.
Universal design
Associated requirement: AC-01
Universal design, also known as “inclusive design,” refers to creating a product that’s accessible to all demographics with a wide range of disabilities, abilities, and various characteristics. Apps built to cater to the average user can lead to frustrating experiences and exclude many potential users. The concept of universal design goes beyond the bare minimum legal requirement and becomes an inclusive experience for all your users to enjoy.
Quick stats
- 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment.
- A 2017 US survey commissioned by Comcast showed a whopping 96% of users who are blind or have low vision regularly watch TV. However, 65% also reported encountering problems with looking up what’s on TV.
- 2022 UK survey showed that 4 out of every 5 disabled viewers experienced accessibility issues, often feeling “forgotten” and “excluded” by the video streaming revolution.
As an app developer, you have the opportunity to create a pleasant and meaningful experience for all of your users.
User accessibility preferences
Your app can pull the devices’ accessibility settings from your users using the Accessibility APIs. This will allow your app to stay in sync with your users’ accessibility preferences so they do not have to configure it themselves within your app.
Example: High-contrast user setting
Entertainment OS devices include a high-contrast user setting via Firebolt's Accessibility.highContrastUI(), which passes a boolean value denoting the user's preference. If the user changes their setting during a session in your application (e.g. as a Voice command), this will be passed as a change notification.
If your application is not high contrast by default or has an additional high contrast feature, this setting is used to honor the user’s preference.
Closed captions
Associated requirements: AC-03, SD-02
Closed captioning shows the audio portion of a video program – including dialogue, narration, and sound effects – as text on your users’ TV screens. Our platform has enhanced closed captioning controls built right in for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Your users can customize their captions by font size, style, color, contrast, and more for greater readability.
Your app may be legally required to support closed captioning. As a general rule, most content that has previously aired on television with captions must be closed captioned in your app. However, while it may not be legally required for some content, we recommend that all your video content is closed captioned to create a better & more inclusive experience for your users.
Learn more about how to implement this feature in our Closed Captions documentation.
Voice guidance
Consumers are accustomed to having their devices speak to them. The platform has a Voice Guidance feature that allows your users with visual disabilities the freedom to independently explore thousands of TV shows and movies. It audibly reads what’s on the screen and includes details such as navigational elements and program descriptions to help your users decide what to watch. It is important that you provide properly labeled elements for your navigation guidance experience.
Enabling Voice Guidance is straightforward. HTML5 apps will work with Voice Guidance when proper markup structure and labeling conventions are followed. With Lightning apps, enabling the “Announcer” mix-in will voice out strings found along your app’s focus path.
There are 2 common methods used for Voice Guidance;
- WebSpeech which has a wide range of customization with a lower accessibility standard than Aria.
- Aria which is a much more direct reading with a higher accessibility standard than WebSpeech.
Learn more about how to implement this feature in our Voice Guidance Implementation documentation.
Audio description
Associated requirements: AC-02, SD-02
Audio description refers to audio-narrated descriptions of key visual elements of programming inserted within natural pauses in dialogue. Audio description makes television programs, feature films and other media accessible to people who are blind or have low vision or a visual disability, creating a richer, more independent experience. For example, audio description describes key visual elements such as actions, facial expressions, costumes or scene changes in a program that a viewer who is blind or has low vision or a visual disability would otherwise miss.
Voice commands
Associated requirement: DL-10
The voice remote provides a new level of independence to customers who have limited mobility or dexterity, or have a visual disability. By using simple voice commands, customers can change channels, search for shows, enable closed captioning and more. The voice remote also includes a backlit keypad making it easier to see the buttons in the dark.
Learn more about how to implement this feature in our Voice Commands documentation.
Color contrast
Associated requirements: AC-01, FR-02
Your user’s television screens render color differently than their other screens such as computers and mobile devices. Because of this, we’ve outlined some simple tips:
- Stay away from pure black (#000) and pure white (#fff).
- Use high-contrast colors to make actionable areas bolder and text readable.
- Check your app experience on multiple TV types/manufacturers to ensure the results are consistent.
Many users may have visual disabilities which can remove distinction from colors with the same contrast or make reading difficult. To prevent this frustrating experience from happening to your users, make sure that your colors align with WCAG AAA compliance for large text accessibility standards. You can check your color contrasts here: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/