Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has published a reportdetailing the access features available on electronic program guides(EPGs) for subscription and free-to-air television services, and plansfor improvements.

Overall, the subscription services, and particularly Sky, are leadingthe way in making it easy for viewers to identify programs which havecaptions or audio description (AD) and switch these features on. On theSky EPG, for example, programs with captions or AD are in differentcolours, and the services are activated by pushing the ‘Help’ button onthe remote. In addition to this, Sky viewers who are flicking throughchannels will hear a ‘beep’ when they come to a program with AD, andthere is a dedicated channel which gives a spoken list of all channels...