The Couch Test: Rethinking Streaming Accessibility Through the Customer Journey

Recently, I attended the Toronto International Film Festival. This year it definitely felt different and the feeling didn’t just come from the inaugural Disability Creatives Reception or the nine disability-centered films that were featured. Access was embeded in the entire customer experience from physically accessible venues, companion and accessible seating, open captions and described video across dozens of films and a fully accessible red carpet. I spend a lot of my day-to-day thinking about accessibility and customer experiences and this one really felt delibrate and well thought-out.

Since so much of my work is related to TV and streaming, I left the festival with one very important question: What happens when the glitz and glamour are over and someone with a disability sits down on the couch to watch one of these fantastic films?

Disability inclusion in the screen industry may start with what happens on the big screen or even behind the scenes.However, the inclusive experience continues on to what happens when someone makes the choice to actually watch a film or tv series in the comfort of their own home. They sit down, pick up the remote, open the app, look for something to watch, and then they press play. Can they do all of that independently?

That’s what I call the Couch Test.

Accessibility isn’t just a feature

When we talk about streaming accessibility, the conversation can quickly become a checklist of features.

• Captions.
• Described video.
• Screen reader support.
• Text size.
• Contrast.

All of these things matter, but that’s not how customers experience a streaming service. They experience a journey that might look something like:

Discover → Sign up → Sign in → Browse → Search → Choose → Watch → Customize → Get help

Accessibility can show up, or break down, at every one of those steps and that’s why I’ve started thinking about TV accessibility through the lens of customer journey mapping.

Start by mapping the journey

One of the things I like about journey mapping is that it makes you stop thinking about individual screens and start thinking about the whole experience.

Instead of asking:

“Do we have captions?”

I want to ask:

“Can someone easily find and turn on captions when they need them?”

Instead of:

“Is described video available?”

Ask:

“Can someone tell which content has described video and easily turn it on?”

And instead of:

“Is our login accessible?”

Ask:

“Can someone actually get into the service independently?”

That little shift in perspective can change the entire conversation.

I like to think about myself as the person on the couch, sitting several feet away, and holding a remote. I am navigating with directional buttons and I’m looking at an interface from across the room. By putting the customer experience first, it shifts my thinking. Suddenly, focus becomes crucial, and I’m finding myself asking questions like, where does the remote guide me next? Can I identify what’s selected? Can I return to the previous point? Is the text legible from the couch? Does the experience function with the assistive technology someone may use? These details might seem minor when viewing a screen during a product review, but they’re not so minor when you’re the one trying to watch a show.

The emotional side matters too. This is one of the things I find interesting about journey mapping. It isn’t just about what someone does; it’s also about how the experience makes them feel. Imagine finally finding something you want to watch, you’re ready to relax, you know the content has described video, but you can’t figure out where to turn it on. You find the setting, but it’s buried three menus deep. Or you turn it on and suddenly can’t figure out how to get back to the show. The feature technically works, but the experience doesn’t feel accessible. It feels frustrating, and that’s an important distinction. Good design should reduce friction by not creating another thing for the customer to figure out.

The journey doesn’t stop at Play

I think we sometimes treat the Play button as the finish line, but it’s not. We should be asking ourselvees questions like:

• What happens when someone wants to change the caption size?
• Turn described video off?
• Rewind?
• Find another episode?
• Change audio settings?
• Fix a problem?
• Contact customer support?

The journey keeps going and that’s why I think about streaming accessibility as three connected pieces:

1. The content needs to be accessible.
2. The product needs to be accessible.
3. The service around it needs to be accessible too.

Include accessibility into the journey map

The good news is that product teams don’t necessarily need to create a whole new process. Take the customer journey map you already have and apply an accessibility lens.

At each stage, ask:

Who could experience a barrier here?

What accessibility needs might they have?

What could get in their way?

Have we tested this with people with disabilities?

How will we know if we’ve actually improved the experience?

That last question is really important because accessibility shouldn’t disappear after launch. We can look at things like accessibility feature adoption, journey completion, customer feedback and accessibility-related support contacts to understand where people are still experiencing friction.

So… does your streaming service pass the Couch Test?

For me, it comes down to a pretty simple test.

Imagine someone sitting on their couch, and ask yourself, Can they:

Find it?

Navigate it?

Read it?

Hear it?

Control it?

Customize it?

Understand it?

Get help when something goes wrong?

And most importantly, can they just sit back and enjoy the show? That’s the goal because product management isn’t really about adding a collection of features to a streaming service. It’s about making the whole customer journey work for more people. That’s the shift I want to see more of in TV and streaming:

From features to journeys.

From compliance to experience.

From testing the product to understanding the customer.

And from asking:

“Is this accessible?”

to asking:

“What does this experience actually feel like from the couch?”

Next time you are watching tv, ask yourself: Does my favourite tv or streaming service pass the Couch Test? Our work isn’t complete until it does all the time, and everytime.

The Couch Test: Rethinking Streaming Accessibility Through the Customer Journey was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.