As a person who is low vision, legally blind, I rely upon available technology for safety,utility, and entertainment. I spent 40 years of my life as an industrial engineer andadvocate for people with disabilities. As someone with a penchant for both logic and fairness I find it disheartening to discover what appears to be an inequity in the treatment of entertainment technology designed to accommodate people withdisabilities. It seems a shortcoming exists among the networks, the local broadcasters,and the streaming services with respect to audio description that should typically be found on the SAP channel present on many television programs available today. Myhusband, a 30-year veteran of the broadcast engineering industry, can attest to the hurdles and roadblocks we have encountered to resolve the issue of missing audio description on local network affiliated channels offered on streaming services such as YouTube TV. I believe the personal experience I describe in this brief paper will expose the need for accountability with respect to the transfer and integrity of audio description content in the same manner as exists for closed captioning.
Audio description is an essential media accessibility feature for people who are blind orlow vision. It provides a narration of what is happening on the screen, including physical actions, facial expressions, costumes, settings, and scene changes. This allows people who are blind to enjoy TV shows, movies, and other streaming content just like everyone else. Unfortunately, sometimes issues with audio description presence or quality occur on streaming services.
In this paper, I will discuss one such issue that I encountered as an end user of the streaming application YouTube TV. I will also discuss the steps I took totroubleshoot the issue and the result of my efforts.
I was watching some TV shows on YouTube TV when I noticed that the audio description was not working on the local ABC and NBC network channels. I checked the settings on my TV and on the YouTube TV application, and both were set to enable audio description. I also tried restarting my TV and the streaming application, but the issue persisted. On April 26, 2023, through my "Be My Eyes' app I contacted Google accessibility to help with the audio description issue on YouTube TV. They gave me the link to YouTube TV support, and I opened a case with them. After going back and forth by email with technical support over a few weeks, there was no progress. I needed a resolution to this issue, so I reported the problem to the FCC, which resulted in the filing of informal complaints against the local broadcast stations affiliated with the ABC and NBC television networks. The FCC also contacted YouTube TV despite currently having no jurisdiction over streaming services. While waiting for responses from the local TV stations regarding the FCC informal complaints, I continued my troubleshooting activities with YouTube TV technical support. Their first response was that the issue was "not on their end". Their support then requested that I send them videos of the problem, stats, settings and more. They asked me to perform troubleshooting that many persons who are blind or have low vision may find difficult or impossible to complete on their own. I was fortunate to have a spouse that could pull together the necessary files and videos that were requested. Meanwhile, I received letters from both local TV stations that revealed there were distribution entities in between them and streaming services like YouTube TV. Those distributors are affiliated with the respective networks of the local stations and acknowledged to their local stations that they were indeed not passing audio description to YouTube TV. The ABC technical operations management responsible for content distribution to streaming services commented to my local ABC TV station, WES, that they had no plans to pass along audio description to YouTube TV. The owner of the NBC affiliated local station, WKYC, stated that they would try to find a solution that will encourage NBC Universal, the NBC distributor that feeds local programming to YouTube TV, to pass along the audio description for their audience. Despite the stances taken by the networks, I appreciated the final positive responses from the local TV station affiliates and their willingness to help find a resolution to the issue. On July 17, 2023, I then filed new informal complaints against ABC and NBC as they appear to be responsible for the distribution of local TV programming to YouTube TV.
From the end user perspective, finding answers to this issue required many hours, emails, and complaints over several months to only result in a dead end.
It has been a lot of work for a paying consumer to troubleshoot and pinpoint this missing accessibility component on a streaming service. It was very frustrating dealing with companies and agencies to whom the issue must be explained repeatedly. In my case, it took several weeks to finally get an explanation of why I cannot enjoy audio description on my favorite programs that are available on YouTube TV. The July 25, 2023 response from the FCC regarding the informal complaint against NBC and its distribution operation was disappointing. It stated that the issue with network distribution not passing audio description to streaming services was outside of their sphere of influence because it was not "broadcast" television. At the time of this paper, I still have not received an FCC response regarding the status of the informal complaint against ABC. This left me, an audio description consumer, feeling neglected and without recourse.
In this case the next step seems to lie with the consumer who must pursue other avenues to affect change. Thus, I must now rally support to begin a conversation with those networks and their affiliated distributors that interfere with the intended accessibility made available by content producers. I have submitted a comment addressing my experience through the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) entitled the Matter of Video Description: implementation of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 to be summarized in their biennial reports to Congress, another way of getting my voice heard. This experience was with an audio description issue that affects many consumers at the same time. I realize other circumstances exist that result in the interruption of audio description presence or quality for each consumer. With respect to my experience, I believe that it is important for streaming services to make it easier for end users to report their unique audio description issues and obtain a resolution. They should also have a more compassionate, informed, and centralized process for troubleshooting and responding to these issues. This would save end users a lot of time and frustration.
Streaming services and content distributors need to take audio description seriously. It is an essential accessibility feature for people who are blind or low vision. Streaming services should make sure that they are passing through audio description from the content distributors and should try to encourage content distributors to pass the audio description provided by content producers. Content producers like ABC and NBC should also make sure that they are encoding audio description correctly so that content distributors are not forced to strip the audio description content for any reason. If a technical or monetary issue exists, content providers should be transparent to the end user that ultimately suffers the consequences of the resulting failure to provide accessible media.
In summary, the issue with the missing audio description did not lie with the local broadcast television stations. It was learned that YouTube TV received ABC and NBC local TV station program content from certain network affiliated distributors which acknowledged that they were not passing along the audio description to YouTube TV. Though YouTube TV may not be responsible for the completeness of the content they receive from these distributors, their support desk seemed to lack the knowledge, training, and enthusiasm to help the consumer. Ultimately, it is important for content producers, content distributors and streaming services to work together to ensure that audio description is made available for end users. End-to-end collaboration and cooperation will make it easier for everyone to enjoy media content as it was intended by its producers, regardless of the vision abilities of their audience.
Created on July 12, 2024