ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by introducing the social construction of technology (SCOT), specifically the notion of interpretive flexibility as a frame to understand the mainstream benefits of accessibility features. The chapter then focuses on three traditionally disability-focussed features – captions, audio description and clean audio – to illustrate how their access and inclusion can also be of benefit to a wider television audience. These benefits can be broadly summarised as facilitating increased access to contemporary – personalised – prestige television content in our busy media worlds, promoting transcription and indexing, as well as contributing to advances in an educational setting. Similarly, benefits for the inclusion of other previously unconsidered disability groups are often a consequence of more widely available accessibility features and alternative formats, and these will be referred to throughout.
