Inclusive Entertainment

Problem

Visually impaired customers found it extremely difficult to use basic TV service. The design failed to inform them what’s on now or what channel they’re on. This growing customer base, was excluded for too long. How do we make DIRECTV’s entertainment product inclusive?

My Approach

Mapped the spectrum of visual impairments our customers had, habits and rituals of how they consumed entertainment through ethnographic studies.

Translated legal requirements to product requirements in partnering with Legal and PR teams.

Selected “Text-to-Speech” as the preferred among other solutions such as screen-magnifier, high contrast UI, integration with smart devices like speakers, integrating with mobile/tablet.

Templatized elements to narrate navigating through the UI by auditing DIRECTV’s content and UI ecosystem.

Designed scalable speech model template to orient users on any screen. These models guided the team to create existing and future narrating scripts.

Defined the tone of DIRECTV’s Voice User Interface and delivered over 1500+ English and Spanish copy and over 2000+ lines of text specifications.

Result

Extended DIRECTVs video entertainment offering by creating an in-house voice interface solution for visually impaired users.