As some of you may be aware, TV has just got better for thousands of people with the introduction of audio description by Netflix on ‘select titles’ including its new hit show ‘Daredevil’, the critically acclaimed ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Orange is the New Black’, and Tina Fey’s ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ and the epic adventure series ‘Marco Polo.’

This will be followed up by audio description being made available on many more of the TV shows and movies available on Netflix, making potentially thousands of shows more accessible for people all over the world. 

This move by Netflix comes at a time when it was receiving increasing pressure to make its content more accessible from groups such as the Netflix Accessibility Project (netflixproject.wordpress.com). Previously Netflix had stated that it was the studios responsibility, and not theirs, to supply this content, but this has now all changed. A large part of the reason for the change in mind no doubt was the irony caused by its new show ‘Daredevil’ being about a blind lawyer with superpowers, but not being accessible to people who are blind!

Whatever the reasons, we applaud Netflix for being ‘daredevils’ in taking the right steps to increase accessibility to its shows, and we know many people will get a great deal of pleasure from it.