A teenager who squared up to Sky TV for “discriminating” against people with hearing impairments is celebrating a “victory” against the broadcaster.
Six months ago, Jamie Danjoux, 17, who is moderately deaf in both ears, publicly berated Sky for failing to provide subtitles on its On Demand service.
“People with hearing loss shouldn’t get a poorer service due to their disability,” he said. “We’re paying more than £250 a year for a service that we can’t fully use.”
Mr Danjoux set up a petition demanding Sky provide On Demand subtitles to enable the 11 million people in the UK with hearing loss to view their favourite programmes.
Nearly 30,000 people signed the petition, and the UK’s leading charity for deaf people, Action on Hearing Loss, got behind the cause.
This week, Mr Danjoux, from Newcastle, announced that the campaign had been successful.
The broadcaster has promised to provide subtitles for at least 80 per cent of the programmes and films on Sky On Demand, Sky Box Sets and Sky Catch Up by the end of the year.
Mr Danjoux noted Sky had “delivered their promise” – but vowed to “personally [keep] an eye” on the company to ensure it continues to subtitle its shows. Making TV more accessible supporter Rosa Latham said: “This will make such a difference to families that can now sit down together and enjoy programmes as a shared experience.” Another signatory, Johnny Hahn, said: “I have hearing loss in both ears and although I have had Sky for many years, I was really considering cancelling my Sky subscription as I felt disgusted by the lack of accessibility.”
A Sky spokeswoman said: “Making our content more accessible is something we have been working on for a long time and we are really pleased with the response we’ve seen so far.
“Jamie and other deaf customers were involved in the trials and are continuing to help shape the customer experience within our existing trial groups.”