Accessibility

In short

• Every screen can be used without a mouse: with a keyboard in a browser, and with the arrow keys, OK and Back on a TV remote.
• Subtitles can be turned on in any language the file has, made larger, given a background, moved earlier or later, or read aloud.
• Audio description tracks are named as such, and you can ask for them to play whenever a title has one.
• Leyla follows your device’s light or dark setting, and its reduced-motion setting.
• Some things are missing, and they are listed below, so you do not have to find them out the hard way.
• If something does not work for you, write to hi@tropicalthink.com. We answer within 5 working days.

What helps

Keyboard and remote

Buttons, links, posters, menus and forms can all be reached and used from the keyboard in a browser, with a visible focus outline. On the LG and Samsung TV apps, and in the web app on a TV, the arrow keys move between posters and buttons, OK opens or presses, and Back goes back or closes what is open. The TV layout is larger than the phone and desktop layout, so it can be read from the sofa. In the player, the space bar or OK plays and pauses, and the left and right arrows skip. These single-key shortcuts can be turned off in Account, under Playback on this device, if you use speech input or a switch. On a TV remote with a subtitle (CC) key, it opens Audio & Subtitles.

Subtitles

The player lists every subtitle track in the file and any subtitle file beside it, in the languages they come in, and remembers your choice. You can choose the size (small, medium, large or extra large), the background (automatic, solid or none) and a delay, to move the text earlier or later against the picture. Subtitles are drawn by the player and are the same whether the film plays directly or is converted. A film downloaded to the app for watching offline keeps its subtitles, with the same choices.

Read subtitles aloud, in Audio & Subtitles, speaks each new line of the subtitles on screen in a voice for their language, on the web, in the apps and on Roku. Nothing is spoken while the film is paused.

Audio tracks

Every audio track in a file can be chosen from the same sheet, labelled with its language, name, format and number of channels. Your choice is carried through to the picture and sound that reach your screen, and stays in sync with the picture.

A track that describes what happens on screen is labelled Audio description. In Account, under While you watch, you can ask for it to play whenever a title has one, in the language you would otherwise hear; the choice follows you to every device.

Light, dark and motion

The web app and the apps follow your device’s light or dark setting without any switch to find. Text and controls are checked against the contrast levels of WCAG 2.1 AA. When your device asks for reduced motion, Leyla reduces its animations. The Android, iPhone, iPad and desktop apps follow the device’s text size, bold text and high contrast settings. In a browser that asks for more contrast (Increase Contrast on a Mac, iPhone or iPad), the web app draws its secondary text and its borders stronger; zoom to 200% and the pages reflow to fit.

Screen readers

Controls, images and forms have names and roles, dialogs are labelled, and a form tells you which field needs attention and why. We check the structure that screen readers read (names, roles and labels) on every screen. We have not yet tested with the screen readers built into TVs (see below).

On Roku

The Roku app works with the arrow keys, OK, Back and the star button of a Roku remote, and with Audio Guide, Roku’s screen reader (Settings, Accessibility, Audio Guide; or press the star button four times quickly). With Audio Guide on, Leyla reads the sign-in code a letter at a time (press an arrow to hear it again), the menu, each poster with its year or time left, a title’s page with its details and synopsis, each episode, how many results a search found, and what the player does: playing, paused at which minute, where a scrub is going, a Skip intro offer and the next episode’s countdown.

In the player, press Down for Audio and subtitles: subtitles (or Off), every audio track by language with Audio description named, and two choices, Read subtitles aloud and Prefer audio description. Subtitles follow Roku’s own caption style (Settings, Accessibility, Captions style), where you can change their size, font, colour, edges, background and opacity. Up says where the film is. Back always goes back, and cancels a film that is still starting.

The countdown to the next episode, and whether intros and credits are skipped, follow the choices in your Leyla account, as on every other device; the countdown can be turned off so that the next episode waits for you.

What is not there yet

These are the gaps we know of. We are working through them, and each one that is fixed leaves this list.

• Subtitle looks. On the web and in the apps, size, background and delay can be changed; colour, font and position cannot yet. (On Roku, Roku’s caption style settings change all of these except the delay.)
• Text size. There is no text size setting of its own. The TV layouts, Roku’s included, are fixed at one size.
• Screen readers on TVs. We have not yet listened to how the TV’s own screen reader (Samsung’s Voice Guide, LG’s Audio Guidance, Roku’s Audio Guide) reads Leyla on a real television. On Roku, what it reads was written for it but has not been heard end to end.

Report a problem

If part of Leyla cannot be used with the way you use a screen, or something on this page is wrong, write to hi@tropicalthink.com. Tell us the screen or app, the device (for example, the TV model), and what you were trying to do. You do not need to say why you need it.

We answer within 5 working days, and tell you what we can fix and roughly when. If we cannot fix it, we will say so, and look for another way to get you what you needed.

Leyla is made by tropicalthink, a very small company in Marburg, Germany.