When ITVX officially goes live on 8 December, deaf viewers will have access to a worldwide streaming first, a British Sign Language channel.
It will feature signed programming from a range of shows including the Emmerdale and Coronation Street omnibus episodes, Cilla, Alan Carr’s Epic Gameshow, Vera, Lewis, and The Saint.
The channel will be regularly updated and will evolve to include both recent and archive programming from a wide variety of genres.
“We’re committed to placing great accessibility at the heart of ITVX and our offering at launch represents significant progress on ITV Hub. Our ITV Signed Channel gives us a fantastic platform for showcasing our rich archive of signed programmes,” said ITV’s Director of Accessibility, David Padmore.
“Building in accessibility from the start is important and should be the norm, and we look forward to seeing ITV expanding its access services across the remaining platforms,” added Teri Devine, Associate Director for Inclusion at RNID.
ITVX will now have subtitles for over 90% of on-demand programmes on every platform and device – from the mobile apps, through the main web browsers to all connected TVs and plug-in devices.
For live TV watched through ITVX, subtitles will be available to around 80% of viewers, watching through our mobile apps, web browsers and most connected TV devices, with work in progress to enable live subtitling via the remaining platforms, Freeview, YouView, Freesat and Chromecast.
Subtitles will also be available on all 20 themed channels on all platforms except Freeview, YouView, Freesat and Chromecast, at launch.
The remaining subtitling gaps will be resolved in the first half of 2023.
