Audiovisual media access

What the EAA covers here

This sector reaches services that provide access to audiovisual media — the catalogue, the player, and the electronic programme guide a consumer uses to find and watch something — rather than the broadcast content itself, which sits under separate audiovisual media rules. A video-on-demand platform’s browsing and playback interface is the target here; the film or programme inside the player is not what this Act reviews.

That distinction matters in practice: a catalogue can be fully navigable and a player fully operable while the underlying video itself carries no captions at all, and the two findings belong to different obligations.

The access layer, not the programme

“Access layer” is a useful shorthand for what’s actually in scope: search and browse, recommendation rails, the programme detail page, the player chrome around the video (play/pause, seek, volume, captions, audio description selection), and the EPG grid for live or scheduled content. Each of these is an interactive interface in its own right, built the same way any other web or app surface is, and reviewed the same way.

Catalogues, players, and guides

Players deserve particular attention because their controls tend to be custom-built rather than native browser controls, which means keyboard operability, labelling, and focus visibility aren’t automatic — they have to be built in deliberately. Programme guides are frequently a dense grid, which raises its own focus-management questions distinct from a simple list. And a caption or audio-description track that exists at the file level is only useful if the interface actually surfaces a control to turn it on.

What auditors look at first

A review typically starts at the player: can every control — play, pause, seek, volume, captions, audio description — be reached and operated from a keyboard, and does focus stay visible as it moves between them. From there it checks whether captions and, where provided, audio description are actually selectable in the interface, not just present in the underlying file. It then moves to the guide and catalogue: whether the focused item in a programme grid is visually indicated, and whether search results state their own count and structure rather than relying on a sighted user scrolling to see how many there are.