Sky Sports is adding new accessibility features to its Premier League coverage, making it easier for blind, partially sighted and hard-of-hearing fans to support their team.
The British-based company claims that “the two services mark a significant step forward in making live sport more accessible to a wider audience.”
The first is a Live Descriptive Audio Commentary feature which is targeting football fans with sight loss. Instead of offering occasional commentary, as the previous audio offering did, Sky is moving to a continuous description of the match action that Sky says is “closer to the style of traditional radio commentary”.
Sky adds that it helps supporters better understand the movement of play, as well as the atmosphere on and off the pitch, creating a “richer and more immersive live football experience”.
It is available across around 109 Premier League matches per season, which equates to roughly one match per day in each gameweek.
To check if you can watch it on certain matches, just open your TV Guide and scroll to the programme. Sky says that the AD logo will appear, and a short beep will also sound to indicate that the feature is available.
For hard-of-hearing and deaf football viewers, there’s good news too. The Live Subtitles feature lets you follow live commentary, analysis and on-screen dialogue in real time. You can find it on all front-channel Premier League matches, covering approximately 210 games each season.
The features are available across Sky+, Sky Q, Sky Glass, Sky Stream and NOW, as well as to customers watching via Virgin Media.
Both features may not be available across all of the Premier League matches on Sky, but this is still a step in the right direction to make sure that every football fan can get better access. Let’s see if other providers can step up their game as well.
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