Response to the BBC Trust review of YouView from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) Author: John Paton, Digital Media Development Officer Date: 22/11/13 1. Introduction As the largest organisation of blind and partially sighted people in the UK, RNIB welcomes the opportunity to respond to this consultation. This response will focus on the first question in the review which is "Does YouView provide the full range of accessibility and usability features that were envisaged at launch and do these deliver all of the intended benefits?" 2. The Importance of Television to Blind and Partially Sighted People Since our Needs Survey in 1991 showed that a large majority of blind and partially sighted people watch television 1, RNIB has taken an active role in highlighting TV access issues. We have worked to try to ensure access to programmes, services and equipment, both by direct work with broadcasters and manufacturers and by influencing legislation and regulation. In this digital age, being able to watch TV remains important to blind and partially sighted people. In 2006 Research by the University of Birmingham 2 found that around 87 per cent of blind and partially sighted people regularly watch TV and videos or DVDs. In RNIB's "Update on the inclusive society 2013" report respondents were asked to select from a list of statements about what kind of impact fully accessible television and radio would have on their lives: 56% said that it would make them more independent; 1 RNIB Needs Survey (1991) Blind and partially sighted adults in Britain: the RNIB Survey Volume 1, by Ian Bruce, Aubrey McKennell and Errol Walker 2 Douglas, G., Corcoran, C., Pavey, S. (August 2006) Network 1000: Opinons and circumstances of visually impaired people in Britain: report based on over 1000 interviews. 1
56% said is would make them happier about life; 56% said it would make them feel less socially isolated; 51% said it would make them feel better about their sight loss In addition 68% of respondents selected at least one of these impact statements and 38% selected all four of them. 3. Response There were two deadlines put forward for the inclusion of accessibility features by YouView. Some features were to be available at launch and some were to be available 12 months after launch. Both deadlines have passed. However RNIB have seen enthusiasm for, and commitment to, accessibility from the YouView team. YouView have actively spoken to RNIB about the features that would help our consumers and have already started implementing accessibility improvements. This should be considered in assessing whether YouView has delivered fully on their accessibility commitments. Access Services YouView supports access services on both standard and high definition broadcast content but there is no evidence yet of audio description on the VOD services. RNIB understands that this is not within the control of YouView and therefore out of scope of the current review. If the Trust is reviewing whether the accessibility of YouView has met the requirements however, then the BBC needs to lead by example by ensuring that iplayer on YouView supports audio description. The idea of a backwards EPG is, as far as possible, to allow catchup content to be consumed in a way that is indistinguishable from watching content as it is broadcast. Until catch-up content is supported by the same access services available on real time broadcast content many users will not be able to access this programming, creating a large discrepancy between those who rely on and use access services (such as audio description) versus those who do not. RNIB is pleased to note that the remote controls for the Humax and Huawei boxes have dedicated subtitle and audio description buttons. 2
In order to achieve a seamless experience for access service users YouView have ensured that system settings such as Audio Description are persistent within YouView and that their status is available to app developers. As long as app developers use and honour these settings this will provide a more transparent and seamless experience for access service users. YouView should provide appropriate encouragement to app developers to do so. Visual aspects The YouView website states that YouView will incorporate a high visibility interface, easy to read fonts and an optional opaque user interface. RNIB worked with YouView to create a high contrast colour scheme which has now been provided as an update to users. The font used across the YouView interface is FS-Me which has been designed for readability and the high contrast colour scheme also removes any transparency from the menus. For partially sighted users this is now one of the most accessible visual user interfaces available. The high contrast menu is also pleasing to view. This removes a lot of the stigma of a menu designed specifically for partially sighted people and makes it more likely to be used by people who have not yet accepted that they are losing their sight and need to make adjustments. Although out of scope of this review, RNIB notes that the software update providing a high contrast colour scheme has not been pushed to all YouView boxes by service providers which means that not all partially sighted customers are currently able to use this feature. RNIB expects YouView to give appropriate encouragement to service providers to push accessibility updates to customers as soon as possible and to provide sufficient warning and preparation for them to do so. Magnification YouView has incorporated a magnifier with a dedicated button but the initial implementation of the magnifier lacked usability. YouView have taken on board feedback from RNIB and have adapted the user interaction of the zoom so that users can interact with the interface while utilising the zoom. This is the first major TV platform to incorporate a zoom and YouView have overcome technical issues, such as allowing interaction while zoomed and ensuring that context is not lost while zooming in on the EPG. 3
Text to speech The Final Conclusions 3 document for project Canvas (YouView) published by the Trust published in 2010 states: "The Trust notes that text-to-speech capability is increasingly included as a standard feature in many consumer electronics products (for example, the iphone and the Amazon Kindle). Long term, the Trust would expect the Canvas joint venture to follow this practice. The Trust accepts that it is a significant challenge to provide this at the launch of what will already be a very innovative technology targeted at a relatively low price point. The Trust considers, therefore, that it is not economically justifiable or proportionate to mandate that all Canvas boxes should provide integrated text-to-speech support from launch, particularly in circumstances where the Trust's Equality Impact Assessment has shown that Canvas overall is expected to confer positive benefits on blind and partially sighted people. But the Executive should encourage some manufacturers to offer an integrated solution within 12 months of this approval." In 2010 RNIB released Smart Talk, a Freeview set-top box that was fully accessible using text-to-speech and in the same year Sky produced the Sky Talker, a companion device that speaks channel information to allow the user to confidently find content that they want to watch. Both of these devices offer spoken interfaces at a low price point. In 2012 Talking TV products were brought to market by other companies independently from each other. Panasonic built talking features as a standard (referred to as Voice Guidance) into the majority of their TV range and TVonics retrofitted text-to-speech to a set-top box making the entire user experience accessible to a blind user. By retrofitting speech into a set-top box TVonics demonstrated that speech does not require significantly more resources in terms of hardware than standard receiver equipment does. A fully accessible spoken interface was made available to consumers via a software upgrade. 3 Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/services/making_content_available/canvas_final.html 4
Not only have Panasonic continued to include Voice Guidance as standard on the majority of their 2013 range of televisions in the UK they have made the feature available as standard internationally. This demonstrates that Panasonic view text-tospeech as economically justifiable. This year IEC published IEC:62731 Text-to-speech for television - General requirements. This is an international standard created by an industry led consortium outlining how to make a television accessible via text-to-speech. The fact that this was industry led shows that Panasonic are not the only TV manufacturers that feel text-to-speech is a viable technology for the TV market. The original PVA (Public Value Assessment) for YouView states that it "...seeks to impose a discipline on the user experience, one which conforms to best practice in terms of accessibility. We can see the value of such an approach; a growing demographic of older and disabled users is disenfranchised by technological advances." Current best practice in terms of accessibility for blind and partially sighted people is to provide integrated text-to-speech. This is especially true for the older demographic that the PVA specifically refers to. An online technology magazine, Techradar, talking about the TVonics set-top box stated " this tech is ideal for anyone in the least bit nervous about the digital age." 4 In the time that has passed since the PVA was published accessibility best practice has moved on. RNIB notes that the executive was tasked to " encourage some manufacturers to offer an integrated solution within 12 months of this approval." This is no longer enough. To achieve accessibility best practice integrated text-to-speech must be a dedicated goal that YouView is actively working towards as suggested in the BBC Trust's Final Conclusions, " text-to-speech capability is increasingly included as a standard feature Long term, the Trust would expect the Canvas joint venture to follow this practice." 4 http://www.techradar.com/news/television/will-apple-s-itv-feature-voice-recognition-and-aspeaking-program-guide-1087122 last viewed 16/08/2013 5
4. Conclusion The initial proposals for YouView listed a range of accessibility features that would need to be incorporated into YouView devices. Instead of treating this list as a tick-box exercise YouView have spoken to consumer member organisations and given serious consideration to which features would improve the accessibility of the YouView product. Further evidence of this is that when YouView were informed that their zoom feature was unusable they resolved to fix it. Fixing the issues with the zoom feature required considerable engineering effort whereas deciding to leave the zoom as it was would have still fulfilled the requirement on paper. YouView chose to take the more complex route in order to provide a better user experience. Although the Trust originally felt that it could not mandate integrated text-to-speech, RNIB considers that this is now a sufficiently established technology in the market place that it should now be mandated. With an attractive, high contrast colour scheme, backwards EPG, and working zoom YouView is currently one of the most accessible platforms for visually impaired people. The provision of text-tospeech will make YouView accessible to blind users and would then ensure that YouView would be one of the most accessible and user friendly TV systems available to consumers. For further information please contact: John Paton Digital Media Development Officer RNIB (Royal National Institute of the Blind) 105 Judd Street London WC1H 9NE E-mail John.Paton@rnib.org.uk Phone 0207 391 2314 Mobile 07867 37 26 43 6