Will You View go the way of the dinosaur?

A report published today welcomes YouView’s implementation of accessibility features for viewers with visual and cognitive impairments but says not enough progress has been made in delivering a full text-to-speech solution.

However, in its response to the Trust’s review, BT said the service’s accessibility features “would not have developed as quickly as it has without BBC involvement.”

All seven shareholders recently signed a new funding agreement for YouView.

Today’s report reveals that the one condition of the BBC’s continued involvement, is that text-to-speech functionality providing remote control functionality and the ability to browse the EPG “must be implemented in 2014/15.”

One initial condition the Trust imposed was that the BBC must not favour YouView in its on-screen promotion of TV platforms.

Today’s report say there’s no evidence that this condition has been broken, nor of the BBC’s involvement “affecting the decisions of other public service broadcasters to make their programmes available to other platforms.”

Some stakeholders, including Channel 4, suggested the BBC was being overly cautious and “could do more to promote the platform across its different services”.

It also calls on YouView to “promptly” ensure channel owners can deliver content direct to users without having to go through BT and TalkTalk, two of the projects other shareholders who both use the service as the basis of their pay-TV services.

Such functionality is already planned and, in its submission to the Trust’s review, Sky confirms its intention to offer channels direct to consumers via its NOW TV brand.