Accessible inflight entertainment comes to Qantas

Transcript

20 April, 2014

Roberta: Any listeners who have travelled by air are bound to be familiar with the frustration of being unable to access inflight entertainment.  Now a simple change to their system has made inflight entertainment on Qantas flights available to screen reader users.  Here to tell us more is Media Access Australia’s Eliza Cussen.  Welcome, Eliza.

Eliza: Hi Roberta.

Roberta: Now what system does Qantas use and why was it inaccessible to begin with?

Eliza: Well Qantas has started using iPads in their cabins of their planes to show the inflight entertainment video.  Ordinarily that would be great because as we know iPads are so accessible, so imagine a lot of blind and vision impaired passengers were thrilled to discover that what was in front of them was actually an iPad.  The problem was though that even though the accessibility features were there on the devices a user wasn’t able to go into the settings menu and actually turn them on, which as I’m sure you can imagine would be very frustrating.

Roberta: So what has Qantas done to fix the problem?

Eliza: Well a number of people complained and made Qantas aware of the problem and I’m happy to say that they have responded positively and actually changed the system.  So they made a very simple change that just allowed users to access the settings menu and turn on voiceover.  So that’s a quick fix that will benefit thousands of people.

Roberta: So what about the actual media player?  Does that work with screen readers?

Eliza: Well that was my first question.  As soon as I found out that there was actually an accessibility feature on the iPad I thought, well yeah that’s great but I doubt a person could actually go in and play a video.  Having worked in this area for a while I’m afraid my expectations are just not that high.  But somewhat surprisingly the actual media player interface itself is accessible.  So a friend of ours, you might know David Woodbridge with Vision Australia, he blogged about this on a flight from Sydney to Melbourne and he reported that he was able to browse all the menus, flick through all the video options, read what he was having for lunch and watch videos, all using the screen reader on the iPad.  So he didn’t run into any difficulties at all, which I’m aware that this is a slightly depressing thing to say but I was very surprised by that.

Roberta: Well I’m very happy about it.

Eliza: Yeah, exactly.
Roberta: So Eliza, what routes is the accessible inflight entertainment on?  It may not be on all of them.
Eliza: It is not available on all of them.  At the moment it’s just available on 17 domestic routes within Australia.  That includes the most common ones; Melbourne to Sydney; Melbourne to Perth.  Unfortunately they aren’t available on long haul flights yet and I know that’s what will make the biggest difference to people.  There’s a big difference between being without a video on Sydney to Melbourne versus Sydney to London or Melbourne to San Francisco.

Roberta: But I’m glad that you said ‘yet’ because I mean now that this has happened it’s a breakthrough isn’t it. 

Eliza: It is, it really is.  I mean, hopefully the iPad system will be rolled out across the Qantas fleet.  We’re not sure whether that will occur or what timeframe there is but hopefully it’s a matter of when and not if.  In the meantime I’d recommend that anyone going on a long haul flight bring their own tablet or laptop into the cabin with them, make sure they load them up with videos from iTunes or somewhere else just so they have that accessible interface and don’t have to ask for assistance from a sighted person, which I know is a terrible thing to have to do if you have to ask a travelling friend or a flight attendant to come help you just to access a video and get it playing.  Best to just avoid that and bring your own device.

Roberta: Well, what about audio description?  Is that going to be available?

Eliza: You always ask me that and my answer is almost always the same.  I’m afraid not at this stage, Roberta.  Unfortunately audio description just isn’t mainstream enough yet to make it on to Qantas’ system.  But the reassuring thing is that Qantas does have closed captions available when possible.  I’m sure that when audio description becomes more widely used, chances are Qantas will be committed to it, but that’s a long term thing.

Roberta: Oh well, let’s hope that it’s not too long in the future.  Well you can find out more information about accessible media on the Media Access Australia website, that’s mediaaccess.org.au or by calling 02) 9212 6242 and speak with Eliza and the team.  Thank you very much for all of that today, Eliza.  It’s always good to speak to you, especially when there’s good news.

Eliza: Love to bring it to you, Roberta.

Roberta: I’ve been speaking with Eliza Cussen from Media Access Australia and Media Access Australia are supporters of this program.
 

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