Judy Dixon
Amazon Prime Video was one of the earliest commercial video streaming services, and today is one of the largest with a lot to offer a blind or visually impaired audience. The service began as Amazon Unbox in September 2006. The current iteration of Prime Video was launched in December 2016 and now has more than 125 million members.
Amazon Prime members have access to thousands of movies and TV series as part of their membership fee, while other content is available for purchase or rent. The selection of included-with-Prime titles changes regularly, and other titles can be played free with ads or rented/purchased without ads. If you are not an Amazon Prime member, you can sign up for Prime Video for $8.99 a month. New members can get a 30-day free trial and college students can get a six-month free trial.
As of August 2021, Amazon Prime Video offered more than 24,000 movies and 2,100 TV series. The content on Amazon Prime Video continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In May 2021, Amazon acquired MGM and in July 2021 it was announced that films from Universal Pictures would be brought to Prime Video. However, content from both of these companies is already available on competing streaming services so it is unclear exactly when this content will be brought to Prime Video as a result of these acquisitions.
One feature that distinguishes Prime Video from similar streaming services is live sports events. These include NFL football, NBA basketball, and PGA golf. In March 2021, the National Football League announced a 10-year deal that gives Prime Video the exclusive rights to air its "Thursday Night Football" games starting in 2022. Prime Video has already aired NFL games for at least two seasons, but they were simulcasts rather than exclusives.
Signing up for Prime Video
The process of signing up for Prime Video varies somewhat from platform to platform.
On an iPhone:
Download the Prime Video app from the App Store.
Launch the app and sign into Amazon with your e-mail address or phone number and your password, or create an account if you don't have one.
If you are a Prime member, then you can accept or decline notifications and you will be on the main screen of the app.
If you are not a Prime member, you will be prompted to subscribe to the service.
On an Apple TV:
Download and launch the Prime Video app.
Select Get Started.
You will be instructed to open a web browser on a computer or mobile device and go to www.amazon.com/mytp, and you will be given a code to enter when you get there.
Log into your Amazon account or create an account if you don't have one, and enter the provided code. At any time, you can press the Up Arrow on the Apple TV remote to have VoiceOver repeat the code. The code is valid for 10 minutes.
Alternatively, you can scan a QR code that is displayed in the corner of the screen.
Other mobile devices, streaming media players, and smart TV's use similar methods.
Supported Platforms
Amazon Prime Video can be accessed on a variety of platforms, including: web browsers; Smart TVs from Sony, LG, Samsung, Sharp, JVC, Panasonic, and others; cable services; mobile devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Android devices; Apple TV; Amazon devices, including Fire TV/Fire TV Stick, Echo devices with a screen (such as Echo Show, Echo Spot), Fire Tablet; Roku; and Chromecast. Not all devices have the same features.
To use Prime Video on a computer running Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, or Linux, open a supported web browser, go to www.primevideo.com and log into your Amazon account. Supported web browsers are: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and Opera. From the browser, you can purchase and play content, access live streams, and access closed captions and audio description.
The service supports several advanced video and audio formats. Dolby Atmos is available on some titles but that number is still quite small. The description page for a title will let you know in which formats the title is offered.
Getting Help with Prime Video
Prime Video has a very extensive help page. Here you can learn about installing Prime Video on your devices, get technical support with any playback issues including live streaming, and cancel subscriptions you no longer want or request a refund for something you purchased by mistake.
If you choose Contact Us, you will be taken to a page with a live chat option. If you want to talk with a human, select the We Can Call You link, choose the reason you want to talk to someone, and if the subject is something they can help with, you will be prompted for a phone number. Many of the topics yield additional help articles.
Amazon Channels
Similar to Apple TV+, Prime Video also offers over 100 channels. This is the Amazon Prime add-on that lets you choose to access other services from within the Prime Video app. Amazon Prime members can add channels such as Showtime, Starz, and Hallmark Movies Now without a cable provider. The cost for most channels is similar to their cost elsewhere. Subscription providers manage the availability of titles that are included with their service.
Some channel subscriptions also feature Watch Live. This feature gives you the option to live stream programming on supported devices at the same time that it's broadcast on TV.
Watch Party
Viewers can use a feature launched in 2020 called Watch Party to enjoy movies and other content virtually with friends and family. There can be up to 100 people in a Watch Party but each person must have a US-based Prime Video subscription. All of the movies and TV shows are available through this feature. If the content requires rent or purchase, each member of the Watch Party must purchase the item.
To get started, using a Fire TV or supported web browser on a computer, locate a title you want to watch with others, choose Watch Party, enter the name you want to use when chatting with others, then choose Create Watch Party. There are several social media options or you can Copy Link for sending via email or text message. By selecting that link, your friends and family can join your Watch Party. The host can play, pause, and control the video, and hosts have a chat feature to talk with all other members of the group. The content can only be viewed on a computer or Fire TV device, but members can simultaneously chat from a mobile device.
Audio Description
In June 2017, Amazon's Prime Video began supporting audio description. They began with more than 133 movies from studios such as Disney, Lionsgate, NBC, Paramount, and Warner Brothers. They continue to add titles and now thousands are available with English audio description, including such titles as The Hunger Games, Inception, Captain America: Civil War, and The Big Short. All Amazon Original titles in the US have audio description. These include many popular TV series such as The Man in the High Castle, The Boys, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Amazon Prime maintains its own list of titles with audio description at Amazon.com: Movies and TV Shows with Audio Descriptions: Movies &TV and the American Council of the Blind's Audio Description Project maintains lists of all known titles with audio description including those on Prime Video.
Amazon Prime Video is now producing much of its described content with synthetic speech. This practice is somewhat controversial among blind viewers. Though Amazon is not the only provider to offer content with text-to-speech descriptions, it is by far the largest producer. Prime Video's goal is to use text-to-speech technology to simplify the process of creating audio descriptions to where they become industry standard for all content, just like closed captions.
Most of its content is produced using the Joanna voice, a high-quality adult female voice. Joanna is one of the six adult English voices available through Amazon Polly, their cloud service that offers text-to-speech technology in many languages.
Two types of text-to-speech are typically used for audio description, concatenative and neural. Concatenative text-to-speech simply assembles words from stored sounds. It is the kind of text-to-speech that is most familiar to screen reader users. Neural text-to-speech is based on machine learning methods that aim to recreate human learning processes. Rather than having to piece together strings of speech fragments that represent a particular expression or emotion, the artificial intelligence behind neural text-to-speech methods "learns," through repetition, how to adjust tone, volume, and other nuanced dimensions of language to recreate natural sounding speech.
Prime Video uses both of these. Here are links to samples of Joanna's voice, both concatenative and neural. Examples of audio description provided with concatenative text-to-speech are the TV series Mad Men and the movies Rear Window and Our Town. Examples of neural text-to-speech are the TV series Psych and the movie Strategic Air Command. They aim to choose the voice that best fits with the content they are describing. This means choosing a voice that is distinct from the voices of actors and actresses in the content, so viewers can easily distinguish the audio descriptions.
Amazon has developed a software package that allows a describer to write descriptive text that will fit in the available pauses and the voice is automatically generated to fill that space. This software allows Amazon to describe thousands of programs, many of which are older titles. As this technology evolves, they have the option to easily change and rerecord scripts with new narrators using either neural or concatenative text-to-speech.
The staff of Prime Video welcomes email feedback from blind viewers on their audio description.
Prime Video on the iPhone and iPad
The Prime Video app on the iPhone and iPad is similar to the apps of other streaming services. On some platforms, such as Apple TV, the Prime Video app is self-voicing, but on the iPhone and iPad it is not.
There are five tabs at the bottom of the main screen: Home, with Continue Watching, Movies and TV Shows We Think You'll Like, and lots of featured categories; Store, with similar sections for movies and TV shows available for rent or purchase; Find, with a search box where you can search by actor, title, or genre as well as lots of categories to browse; Downloads, where all your previous downloads are listed; and My Stuff, which includes your profile, Settings, and your Watch List. It can be very convenient to download content to your mobile device for watching on the go without using your data plan.
The method of activating audio description is also similar. To turn it on, do the following:
While content is playing, double tap for video controls.
Flick to Audio and Subtitle Options and double tap (you may have to flick through quite a few names of stars in the show).
The list of subtitle languages is on the left and the list of audio languages is on the right. Double tap English Audio Description to select it.
On the iPhone, double tap the Close button in the upper right corner. On the iPad, double tap "Dismiss popup" outside the list area.
Prime Video on an Android Phone
Turning on audio description for playback in the Prime Video app is a bit different.
While content is playing, a two-finger swipe up brings up the playback menu.
Flick to the Subtitles and Closed Captions Available button. Even though this button doesn't say anything about audio, this is where you find the control to turn on audio description.
The Subtitles list is on the left and the Audio list is on the right. Select the language you want with audio description.
Double tap the Close button in the bottom right corner.
Prime Video on the Apple TV
On the Apple TV, the Prime Video app is self-voicing so don't be surprised if the speaking voice changes completely when you launch it. This app also opens with a Who's Watching? screen which lets you choose the preferred viewer profile for this session.
To enable audio description in the Prime Video app on the Apple TV, do the following:
While content is playing, flick down on the remote control.
Flick right to the Audio tab and click the remote to select it.
Flick down and you will hear "Full dynamic range." Flick left once to get to the list of languages.
Flick up and down to hear the list of languages. Click the remote on the desired language.
The program now resumes playing.
Prime Video on the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick
If you turned on audio description in the device's settings, when you play content in Prime Video, the audio description will most likely just play. If you want to turn it on or off, do the following:
Double tap the Menu button on the remote.
Press the Down Arrow once to go to Audio and press Select.
Arrow Up and Down to view the available audio languages.
Press Select to check the box for the language option you want.
Press the Back button to leave the menu options.
Conclusion
Amazon Prime Video is a full-featured service with apps that are accessible to users with visual impairments. There is an enormous amount of content available on Amazon, with more being added on a regular basis. Amazon is expending resources to harness the latest technologies to bring a massive amount of high-quality audio description to users with visual impairments. If you already have a subscription to Amazon Prime, then a great deal of this content is now available to you at no additional cost.
This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.
