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A new way of watching television for blind and partially sighted people
Imaginé dans le cadre de la mission de concertation entre industriels et représentants des aveugles et malvoyants, France Télévisions, premier groupe audiovisuel français, lance le tout premier assistant vocal qui leur permettra d’écouter la télévision avec l’audio-description quand celle-ci est disponible.
© How to listen to France Télévisions' audio-described programmes
How to benefit of this service?
This service is now available on connected loudspeakers (Amazon Alexa compatible, or via the Amazon Alexa application on Smartphone) or on recent smartphones, from a"francetv AD" web application or a native "francetv AD" iOS application.
With a simple voice-command, the blind and visually impaired community can now, at any time, simply listen to France tv's national channels (France 2,3,4,5,Ô, Franceinfo) and access a weekly channel guide to search a list of programmes offered in audio description.
Why develop such a service?
This service is fully in line with the France Télévisions Group's strategy to improve the accessibility of its programmes and to include all audiences, in accordance with its public service missions. It thus fulfils one of the missions entrusted by the Ministry of Culture to the Mobile Media Forum of which France Télévisions is a member.
To date, this test service has been developed by the teams of the Digital Innovation Department of the public audiovisual group, in collaboration with the French company Cybronics and with the kind cooperation of associations representing blind and partially sighted people.
What future for this service?
Have you recently acquired or been offered a voice assistant via an online salesperson? The best known has just deployed the "quick links" functionality in France.
It allows you to launch a skill via a URL, provided you are connected via your Amazon account. You can therefore use the following link to go to france tv AD:
This service will be developed in close consultation with associations representing blind and partially sighted people. It is intended to eventually be integrated into the france.tv application.
