CCMA presents its accessibility developments for HbbTV at EBU Horizons 2022

Jordi Mata and Francesc Mas from the engineering and infrastructure department of CCMA (Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation) have presented at the EBU Horizons 2022 conferences of the UER the latest advances of the Catalan media entity in terms of accessibility for HbbTV.

The developments in terms of accessibility on HbbTV of the Catalan broadcaster are the result of several European research projects, such as HBB4ALL o EASYTV, in which the CCMA has collaborated. Among them are progress such as customizable multi-language subtitling for content in direct and a la carte, o la audio description and original version accessible in the on-demand content of the service HbbTV.

One of the points that has aroused the greatest interest on the part of attendees has been the introduction of text-to-speech service incorporated into the HbbTV service of the CCMA, which allows the blind users or with visual functional diversity access the contents thanks to the playback with voice of the various messages written in the user interface on televisions smart TV compatible with the standard HbbTV. The CCMA, in its commitment to universalization of accessibility, has decided release the code used for displaying subtitles, as well as for text-to-speech service implementation present in the TV3alacarta service by HbbTV.

HbbTV is the European interactivity standard for smart TVs initially promoted by European broadcasters with the support of the EBU.