Skip to main content

What Disney+ Does for Accessibility and What It Can Improve

Ever since Disney+ launched a year ago, I have had an account on it. Although I use it less than other streaming sites, I was still pretty familiar with it when I completed an Expert Analysis on it a few weeks ago. One aspect that I focused on was how accessible Disney+ is and what they can do to improve their accessibility. I focused on three main aspects: closed captions, audio options, photo-sensitivity, and cultural sensitivity.

Closed captions and audio options

Disney+ does well with accessibility in regards to these two features. Since Disney+ is available in fourteen countries so far, the seventeen audio options and fourteen closed captions options ensure many more Disney+ users beyond just those who can speak only English can use and enjoy the enormous amount of content on the steaming service. Additionally, one of the audio options is “English [Audio Description]” which allows English-speaking but visually impaired users to participate in watching Disney content too. When a user is watching a video, all they have to do to activate this setting is click the settings wheel in the top right corner to change the audio and closed captions options. The closed captions can also be personalized to a user’s liking by changing the language, font, and font color. This way, if one needs the captions to stand out more or blend in better with the background, they can do so.

Photo-sensitivity

Content that contains a level of flashing lights includes a warning for photosensitive viewers who may need to avoid watching it to prevent unnecessary health issues. However, it only comes on screen very briefly in the top left-hand corner after clicking on a title to watch, and it goes away so quickly I couldn’t even read what the whole warning said. While the inclusion of this warning is helpful and shows that Disney+ is aware of the sensitivities some of their users may have, the warning needs to be more “in your face.” My suggestion to improve this feature would be to have the warning as a pop-up screen that needs to be clicked on before the video starts. This way, the user will definitely notice it and make an informed decision on whether or not they should watch the content.

Cultural sensitivity

Similar to the photo-sensitivity warning but located before clicking on a title, videos that have “outdated cultural depictions” feature a warning in the description of the movie or TV show. Because Disney has been around for many decades, some of their content doesn’t fit the standards of the modern era. While the decision to show this content as originally depicted can provide users with the ability to discuss sensitive issues with their families, particularly children, the notice isn’t as visible as it could be. I recommend that the disclaimer be more specific to what is actually outdated in the title, instead of just saying that it’s an “outdated cultural depiction.” Additionally, the warning should be a different color from the rest of the video description or bigger than the other words. Otherwise, it could go unnoticed as easily as the current photo-sensitivity warning.

Overall, Disney+ has a good foundation for several different accessibility accommodations, but the service could make some improvements, especially to their photo-sensitivity and cultural sensitivity warnings. As the site continues to evolve in terms of new content, hopefully its accessibility features will as well.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Professional Writing?

How did I end up here? As I've gotten closer to graduating from college, I've had people ask me how I ended up on the path that I'm on and why I made the decisions that I did. It still makes me laugh a bit when someone asks me those questions because truthfully, I've never felt like I knew what I was doing. The short answer is that I continually made decisions that I thought would make me happier in the long run. When I applied to Purdue, I already knew I didn't want to go there. No offense, Purdue, but I grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana, and I'd promised to my parents for eight years that I would be moving away for college. To my utter dismay, after all of the college applications had been submitted and returned, I found myself needing to make a decision between going to an out of state college (my dream) and taking out student loans, or staying here and graduating debt-free. I'm here, so obviously I chose the latter. Applying to the Professional Writing ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Writing Professionally Outside of Professional Writing

In an earlier entry, I noted that one of my vivid memories from my time in professional writing comes from the ironic realization that I was doing very little writing throughout one of my courses. Instead, this computer-aided publishing class mainly focused on the design of text and other content that already existed, with the actual writing in the class dealing with the decisions that went into the creation or modification of any presented design. In a sense, this course therefore focused more on the overall user experience of a document—how the user would view all the words and paragraphs and content as a whole—rather than how one would create the technical written elements that were necessary to form the document in the first place. Perhaps to balance this out, then, I want to discuss a recent writing experience that I find to be almost thematically opposite. One of the classes I took this semester was Purdue’s software engineering class, described on the university’s catalog as an ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Virtual Learning Presents New Distractions for Elementary Students

  College students aren't the only ones using Zoom. For those of us in the academic world without children, it easy to forget that elementary students were also asked to adjust to this new e-learning way of life. Unfortunately, though, many of their questions remained unanswered when their world began changing so rapidly. This post will explore the thoughts and feelings of one current 4th grader. For privacy reasons, her name has been changed.  A 4th grader's personal anecdote.  In March 2020, two days before the elementary school shifted entirely to virtual learning, Sarah's father took her out of school and told her she would not be returning until the COVID-19 pandemic was under control. Sarah, who was still in 3rd grade at the time, did not understand what was going on, but she understood that, as her father said, she probably would not be returning to school for a while. The following Monday, Sarah received all of her textbooks and a Chromebook in the mail. Her teach...
Post a Comment
Read more