RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) has presented Samsung Electronics UK with an Inclusive Society Award in recognition of its work in making smart TVs accessible for blind and partially sighted people.
Sight loss charity RNIB collaborated with the electronics giant to develop the Samsung Smart TV range, featuring integrated Text-to-Speech, zoom and high contrast user interface as standard operating functions.
For the first time it means a blind or partially sighted person can purchase a mainstream smart TV and enable the specific accessibility functions they require. As well as the usual digital TV features such as an electronic program guide, smart TVs have integrated internet web browsers and Web 2.0 features. All these features can now be more easily accessed by blind or partially sighted people by enabling the Text-to-Speech functionality provided in Samsung Smart TVs.
RNIB presented the Inclusive Society Award to Samsung at an event attended by Lesley-Anne Alexander CBE, Chief Executive RNIB and Steve Park, Managing Director of Samsung Electronics Research Institute UK (SRUK),
Neil Heslop, Managing Director RNIB Solutions, said:
“RNIB is proud to present Samsung with an Inclusive Society Award, and to congratulate the team there for delivering an innovative solution. We’re delighted that we’ve been able to partner with Samsung to help create a real step change in access to smart television for blind and partially sighted people.
“RNIB supports businesses to respond to the needs of their customers with disabilities and we urge other companies to follow Samsung’s lead in making mainstream products more accessible for people with sight loss.”
Steve Park, Managing Director of Samsung Electronics Research Institute UK (SRUK), said:
“Support for users with vision impairment needs to be an increasing consideration in TV design today, as such we have been focused on ensuring high level of TV Accessibility features in our current Smart TV range.
“We’re delighted to receive an award from the RNIB in recognition of these achievements. It represents the strong collaboration that Samsung Electronics Research UK has with RNIB to help us reach this point.”
To further assist visually impaired users Samsung UK has recently launched a dedicated accessibility section of its website which informs users about the accessibility capabilities of all its products.
To find out more about Samsung accessible products please visit http://www.samsung.com/uk/accessibility/main.html
For more information on Samsung’s new smart TV range please go to http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/tv-audio-video/televisions
