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These are my notes, which I wrote while attending the BBC’s “Monday 17th May: Hearing” event to mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day (which is Thursday 20th May). There were a range of speakers in the 1-hour session. The BBC are running sessions all week, so it’s worth signing up for the others!

Keynote from Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft:

• Unemployment rate is approximately double for people with disabilities.
• People with disabilities have asked to work from home for decades – COVID has removed that barrier, but the unemployment gap actually increased.
• Shout out to two great developments recently: Seeing AI app and Xbox adaptive controller.
• Microsoft is working with universities to level up accessibility skills in its undergraduates.

Nigel Megitt, Executive Product Manager for AV Accessibility at BBC:

• We saw a demo of changing the size of subtitle text on the iPlayer TV app. Note that this was already a feature on the web version.
• iPlayer received mixed feedback on the default size of the subtitles. Realised that there was a preference for different default subtitle sizes based on device type and size.
• There was some technical detail around the standard of subtitle files that the BBC exports.

Kay Ashton MBE, Accessibility Project Coordinator at BBC:

• We watched ‘Sing’ – BSL SignSong (“Fletch@rettes Signing Choir”, participants from BBC Children in Need projects, BBC Ability, BBC Philharmonic and BBC Singers, recorded in lockdown to raise awareness of BSL for Deaf Awareness Week 2021).

Panel discussion including Esmail Patel (of Interpreting Solutions), Fletch@ (of Fletch BSL), and Lewis Vaughn Jones (of BBC Global News):

• Platforms such as TikTok are driving better accessibility on social media (though probably down to better engagement, rather than ‘for accessibility’). And people are becoming proud to show off sign language on social media, both British Sign Language and International Sign Language.
• Automated transcriptions are improving all the time. Also a shout out for the Text to Speech app.

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