Netflix - My Experience with Screen Reader Talkback

Being grown up in nineties I have seen people listening to cricket commentary on their handy radios called transistor radio. Today things have changed with the smart phones and portable audio players where storing favorite song collection became trendy for many of us. With new age technology, we have huge mobile data benefits. Thanks to data war started by few telecom operators.  Because of unlimited data offers, people shifted to the online streaming of videos and audios. Right from a five year old to the security guard of our building, everyone started enjoying his preferred content on YouTube. To encash this massive market several online streaming providers jumped in India with their introductory offers. I tried one of the streaming services on my smart phone and decided to pen down my overall experience in the context of accessibility and usability.

Yes, you guessed it correct! I tried Netflix! One of the expensive streaming services which has very rich and diverse content in the form of films, TV shows, and web series. After scrolling through the list of categories I must say that it is one of the largest streaming libraries available to us. Instead of getting into the plan details I will directly review Android application of Netflix installed on my Moto G5 Plus mobile.

Profiles and Application interface

Netflix subscription is based on the number of screens, for e.g. if you have four screens membership then you can stream the videos on four different devices simultaneously. In other words, you can create four profiles under your account and all of them can stream any content at a given point of time. I am really impressed with this profile based access as managing multiple users in your house becomes easy and each profile can have its own preferences. As soon as you launch this app, on first screen it asks you to choose your profile. After the profile selection it lands us on the home screen which has options as ‘Films’, ‘Series’, ‘Downloads’, ‘Coming Soon’ and ‘Search’.  In ‘More’ tab you have all the configuration settings like Profile Management, Account, Notifications settings. You can even sign out using this option. I always check the accessibility of settings and configuration options before anything else as user customization is top most priority for any interface. Fortunately Netflix stands as winner in this area as all the options and menu are fully accessible with screen reader Talkback.

Finding desired content

On a lazy Saturday afternoon we mostly tend to watch something which can pass some time. Of course with an intension of an entertainment! And at that moment we usually want to find the best content, search quickly and with an ease. Netflix does this job very smartly by categorizing its content by ‘type’. Under the ‘Film’ category you have subsections for languages. I am happy as all the major regional Indian languages are present in this list. You can sort by genres like Drama, Comedy, and Action and even find the specific content by using ‘Search’ option. I tried exploring all these options using Talkback and did not face any issues as such. On home screen you can even have a preview of newly added content in the form of trailer. If you come across any interesting film or Web series then simply add that to your personalize library using ‘My List’ option. Netflix user can download any available content to watch offline from ‘Download’ option. I must say this is a very nice feature if you are a regular traveler where mobile data is not always available.

Streaming player

Built-in video player is one of the crucial modules of any streaming service. Player available on Netflix application is very advance in terms of features and its quality.  However it turned out very disappointing for me in terms of screen reader’s accessibility. Accessing playback menu using Talkback is a nightmare. I struggled a lot to open this menu and it opened on the screen after double tapping at top right corner with two fingers. After opening it, I observed few options like 'Forward 10 Seconds', 'Rewind 10 Seconds', 'Change language and subtitles'. Forwarding and rewinding the stream using timer slider was also not working. Overall this streaming player is not screen reader friendly as of now. I hope Netflix will improve on this in their future update.

Audio description    

Netflix is one of the few services which has rich content library with audio description. By the way, audio description is nothing but additional audio track added to the video which explains the scenes where there are no dialogues. It also describes the surroundings in that frame. Audio description is extremely useful for person with vision impairment as it helps them to understand the visuals more effectively and enjoy the content without much hindrance. Netflix has large number of films, series, and documentaries with audio description. The best part is all the Netflix originals are available with a quality audio description track. Even Netflix originals in Hindi language has this feature. You can search the content with audio description by using various categories. Please note that audio description track is not turned on by default. You need to enable it explicitly from 'Change audio and subtitles' menu available on video player. Unfortunately accessing this option is a hurdle as playback option of video player is not easily accessible while navigating with screen reader program Talkback.

Try and decide

As a streaming service Netflix is super loaded in terms of content. Obviously we have to shell out decent money for transforming our boring weekends into entertaining family time with choice of your popcorns. Either you watch it on your smart phone or smart television you have enough content to indulge your craving for films and shows. I hope Netflix developers will work on their video player to make it more accessible for screen reader users. To begin with one month free subscription is a good choice before joining the large Netflix party. Happy watching!`