Is Apple TV Worth it? (e.g. compared to Roku)

Ooh thanks - I live in the UK and just presumed that accessibility was a worldwide thing.

The thing I don't like about the Chromecast idea is that it means I am tied into using my phone. I normally don't have my phone with me when I'm watching TV. Also my iPhone is a work thing so I'm a little reluctant to install too much personal stuff on it in case someone else has to use it. I like the idea of having everything I need already connected to the TV, but considering how cheap Chromecasts are, it's maybe not a bad thought. I think I can also airplay to the Roku although not tried it yet. I think I have a quite old-fashioned view on using the TV.

Anyway, appreciate the replies - most helpful as always round these parts - thank you!

I must have forgotten to setup notifications on this as I completely missed all the replies above. Thanks again for all the useful information - that's incredibly helpful.

Also really interesting to know about the Samsung. I have a Panasonic TV and it does have some sort of screen reader built in but it seemed pretty useless. However, I only tend to need to change frmo one hdmi channel to another and adjust volume on the TV. Maybe my TV is just old but the smart features just seem really sluggish, although that is compared to the Roku which is very snappy despite its age.

I probably won't do anything for a little while yet. I do really want the Apple TV, but the Google option (particularly its price) is very interesting too.

Thanks very much, everyone !!!

For some reason I had got it into my head that Chromecast was simply a way to beam stuff from a phone to the TV. I didn't really realise it was a full media player in its own right. The new version sounds really good. I guess a screen reader doesn't need to be so advanced for a tv as it's a much simpler interface than a phone or a mac.

Stupid really, I just always overlooked Chromecast for that reason. (At the risk of showing my age, I don't tend to have my phone with me when I watch tv).

It's a shame that All 4 isn't available without the phone, but otherwise it sounds like it might be a good option.

I did some more research on the different options (I know, I'm taking my time - but thinking this might end up being something to suggest as a Christmas present), and I'm thinking the Fire TV Cube might be the way to go.

I found demos of both Apple TV and Fire Stick on YouTube, and both look like they would work pretty well. Oddly I didn't find a decent similar thing for Chromecast.

But the real thing that's got me interested in the Fire TV Cube is that it can be used as a full voice remote. So I can say "Alexa, play xx" and it will do it without the controller. And it sounds like it can be used as a universal remote, so I should be able to get it to turn the volume up/down, pause, switch on the Freesat and TV even, all without the remote. (It also sounds like I can change its wake word to Echo or Computer or something so my Sonos in the other room doesn't get confused). This sounds great particularly if there are 2 of us watching TV.

I presume the screen reader works the same as the Fire TV Stick, which seemed to work pretty well from the demo.

Anyway, thanks again for all the freat feedback - I hadn't realised quite how many good options there were.

Oh damn it, that's not good. I primarily use Netflix but would definitely use iPlayer, and probably All 4 (which I think is missing from Chromecast altogether).

Does anyone know if this is still the case?

It's so frustrating that this should be an issue, considering how good the technology is these days. Do these services not have some kind of legal obligation to ensure rtheir apps are accessible?

I thought I'd start a chat with Amazon Customer Services to ask about the VoiceView support, particularly with BBC iPlayer.

This is what I was told:

"Fire TV does support the voiceview, However the apps that would support it is down to the developers enabling it. BBC iplayer does support it.

Most apps do support it as the functionality is done throught the Fire tv"

So either they are talking rubbish or BBC have fixed it. It doesn't sound like there is a definitive list of apps compatibility which is a shame.

BBC do seem to have a fairly strong focus on accessibility so I would be surprised if they had no interest in supporting it. I did try to contact them - one of those contact forms that asked me about a million things, I finally got to ask my question, type my details in, hit Submit and got punted back to the start. So I've no idea if it sent or not.

Not sure about All 4, but I don't watch it a huge amount and voice search might be enough there. So still leaning towards the Fire TV Cube, and will just have to kick up a fuss if some apps don't work. Given that I've long since abandoned the privacy fears of having an always listening device for the convenience, I think have a device that can control all my equipment and start programs without me even having to find a remote is very appealing.

It does feel like a bit of a minefield.

* Fire TV Cube is the only one that can act as a universal voice remote, has all the apps I need, and most will probably work with a screen reader. Being an Amazon product it will probably be given away for peanuts come Black Friday.
* Chromecast otherwise works well, except is lacking some apps like All 4. I don't really want to have to fallback to my phone. It's possible I could pair it with a Google Assistant, but think that might be a bit fiddly. (I can't really use the one in my sitting room as the kitchen always answers as well)
* Apple TV has all the apps I would want, and probably has the best accessibility, but is not without its problems, and is very expensive.
* Roku is probably out of the question, in the UK at least. I also think I read it might be losing some apps... maybe Amazon Prime?

So finally got one of these thanks in combination to Black Friday and Christmas.

So far, however, I'm not really impressed at all.

Despite what Amazon told me, BBC iPlayer does not work at all with VoiceView, although there are some featured programs you can use from the Home Screen which it does read. All 4 also does not work at all - this one also has a keyboard for you to login which isn't accessible. ITV is a little better except that when you browse all the programmes are represented by images without alt text, so it just reads out things like "a123456" for everything.

Sky News didn't work either, although it does put you straight into live TV so you cn watch without having to use the inaccessible menus.

YouTube worked but the volume of VoiceView was about 10 times louder than everything else.

Netflix works except that it is really slow to use. For everything it will read out a lot of fluff before you get to the program (i.e. row 3, column 2, group 5 blah blah blah). When you use the menu it pauses for a few seconds before reading it out. It also uses an entirely different voice for some reason. I found a setting in VoiceView to stop reading out extra contextual stuff, but doing so completely breaks VoiceView in Netflix.

So probably the only app I've used so far that I'd say I'm happy with is Amazon Prime.

I should note that I have just set things up and used menus - I haven't actually watched anything yet.

The Alexa integration might be good. Although it is quite stupid - it defaults to Alexa as the wake word and loads of the menus say "Alexa" so as I was setting up, it kept playing music or putting on random radio stations. (This might have been my Alexa in the kitchen but changing it to Echo fixed the problem.

It also does integrate with other TV equipment so you can get it to turn everything on and off, change volume and so on. I found the setup a bit confusing although it did work fine with VoiceView as did the rest of the setup - not sure if I've got it right to not yet.

There are some other options like high contrast text which didn't seem to do anything and magnifications which I didn't use.

The main thing that strikes me is the lack of consistency. For example, some keyboards are alphabetical, some are qwerty, some work with VoiceView, some do not all depending on which app you use.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone on here, unless I'm missing something.somewhere to make it work better.

Well I sent out a load of emails about the various app problems on fire TV. BBC sent me a fairly pathetic reply telling me that they only support VoiceOver, to which I responded quite angrily and they were more apologetic, but still useless. Channel 4 sent me a typical fobbing off. The channel that handles Dave and that kind of thing (I can never remember their name, it's something generic) - they ignored me altogether.

But I was really impressed with ITV. They replied quickly, and kept sending me updates to say they were working on it. And the other day they emailed me to say they have fixed it. I had a quick play around with it and so far everything was spoken out. It's so nice to deal with someone who seem sdto actually care. Very impressed with ITV.

On FireTV I also noticed that BBC Sounds actually seems to work quite well, but Spotify not at all.

I also had an issue with my old Panasonic TV and thought it was time to replace it. So I bought a Samsung because I'd read about how accessible they were. I've not dug about in the menus a huge amount (and their remote feels harder to use blind than the Fire remote) but I was disappointed to find that apps like BBC iPlayer don't work there either. The Netflix app is also similar to the Fire one - It still talks over the first few seconds of anything you watch which I find very annoying.). It also says something like "vol-vol-vol-volume up on HDMI 1" every time I change volume which is a bit annoying if it's done over dialogue.
\ think maybe sometimes I expect too much from thes things and just sound ungrateful. Certainly the Samsung is light years ahead of my old Panasonic in this regard.

I would also say that the Fire TV Cube voice control is pretty great if you have the right setup. The actual setup process with a 3rd party device is a little awkward because the text to speech confuses things so you're not quite sure if you heard something at the right time or not. But it's definitely doable. But it's great to be able to just say "echo, turn on tv" or "echo, turn up volume" or "echo, watch xxx" and it do most of the work for you.

Not tried Change 4 app on Samsung but not holding my breath. Will send another stroppy email to BBC at least.

I've not watched iPlayer for a few months, but just started it up on my Fire TV Cube and was totally taken aback when it started speaking to me!

I've not got very far into it yet, but from a quick play around, it seems very snappy and.... I hardly dare say it... accessible!!
I'm probably doing my usual thing of getting too excited too soon, but it's a big improvement on what was there before (ie no VoiceViw support at all).

I've not used the iPlayer app much but it does seem to work great with VoiceView. One small thing is that it seems to forget audio description every time, and when you go to the option it says "Audio Description: on" but it's not. I gave up on Control Room recently as I thought it had no AD, and had a similar experience with What We Do in the Shadows until it occurred to me. Bit stupid of me, I know...
However, I've now discovered that the Netflix app has stopped working with VoiceView. I think I mentioned before, but it did work but the voice was incredibly slow and it would speak over the opening of every program you watch to tell you how long was left, and how to pause it and that kind of thing. But now, you get nothing at all.

I had a pretty terrible support chat with Netflix and think it's been reported but honestly it was pretty hopeless.

I think the voice control is a great feature but it does randomly stop responding sometimes. And quite often you'll say "turn off tv" and it will say "ok" and not do anything.

It also has a few odd habits - like speaking "Home", "Banner Dismissed" or sometimes when I'm watching Freest it'l get bored and start telling me how to navigate the menus that aren't on-screen right now.

Another annoyance - if you ask it to play, for example "For All Mankind on Apple TV" it seems to take you to episode 1, series 1 and not to the next episode, which really defeats the object if you have to grab the remote anyway.

At least the remote is really nice to use if you can't see the buttons - not too many o them, nice and tactile. Unlike my Samsung remote which has a million buttons and I can never find the middle one with the knobbly bit on it.
I think given how expensive the Apple TV is, and that this cost me 60 quid in Black Friday then I can't really complain. Not that it stops me. I think the biggest problem with it is that I don't feel that many companies treat its screen reader very seriously, so I suspect that support will come and go a lot more freely that it might on, say, Apple TV.

I tried Netflix again and it seems to have fixed itself. The speech is still horribly slow but at least I can use it again. The app version hasn't changed, unless the Fire TV software has updated. Or maybe it'll just break again next time I use it.

I was disappointed with my Samsung. The voice quality is pretty horrible, but it's the remote I can't ever quite get used to. I really struggle to find the notch button, and there are just too many of them. That's where I like the Fire tV Cube - I can just say turn on TV, switch to freest or whatever and never touch the horrible remote.

This is massively off-topic, but I'd love to know what a PS5 offers a blind user. I know it has a screen reader, but as far as I know the only accessible games are Last of Us pt 1 and 2.

It's probably because I'm old, but I just prefer keeping my phone and TV separate. If the TV apps work, then it's quicker and nicer to use those than have to fiddle about with my phone, then figure out how to cast to the TV. I'm guessing I can cast from iPhone to Samsung but I just don't really have much interest in doing that. I never have my phone on me when I watch TV. Again, maybe I'm just too stuck in my ways.

I can't say I'm a fan of Sky. I was a customer for years and it was so liberating to finally cancel my subscription and be done with it. Any company that makes you phone up and threaten to cancel just to get a fair price is doing customer services wrong in my opinion.

It feels to me like they are a bit of a relic of the past. How long did it take for Sky Q to get a screen reader at all? And even then, as you say, it doesn't work with any apps, even if the voice is quite nice and clear. And apparently Sky Glass doesn't have it at all. But then, why would you bother with Sky specific equipment when probably every other streaming choice is going to be better, cheaper and not try to tie you in? I can't really see where Sky fits in any more.

Thanks, Brett. I used to be a gamer until last year and had to stop because of my sight problems. I did really enjoy Last of Us 2 on PS4 though but couldn't justify a PS5 just for the first game. (Which I did play as a sighted player, but would love to try again)
I heard that God of War had a lot of accessibility options, but didn't realise it might be suitable for blind players. I also had no idea about Mortal Kombat. I'll have to look into it and see how that works. I'm not a fan of that sort of game normally, but if it is accessible I'd definitely want to give it a try. I'll see if the accessibility options are on the PS4 too.
I'll take up your advice and post on audio games when I get a chance.
Anyway, thanks very much for the info.

Those 2 Xbox games sound really interesting. I loved the Quantic Dreams games on Playstation when I was able to play them. It's a shame you can't get all of these on one platform as it's a bit hard to justify a console purchase just for a couple of games.