I'd heard about this, but what I really want to know is which TV it was originally. I mean, how did it start life--as a mod of an existing TV, or as an entirely accessible product from the start?

And, I hear, it has HDMI. You could buy an Apple TV and hook that up, and end up with even more content (mostly iTunes, it's true).

I don't know how its development went, but I can tell you that in the setting menus there is a whole section dedicated to accessibility. There's the voice guidance that's basically a screen reader, you can adjust the voice to some degree, not as much as you can the voices in JAWS or NVDA, on the TV, there is only one voice, a female sounding one, but you can choose among five speeds, three pitches, and three volumes, the voice guidance volume is separate from the TV's audio volume. And for people with some vision left there's a high contrast mode and a screen magnifier to help make text on the screen easier to read.

Samsung still has some work to do to make the TV truly blind accessible. The voice guidance system is off by default and, other than a downloadable PDF,  there are no blind accessible instructions on how to turn it on, which is easy enough for a blind user to do once he knows what to do, you just hold down one of the buttons on the remote for several seconds, that brings up the accessibility menu with the voice guidance system turned on.

It should also put you into the learn the remote section so you can learn what all the buttons do. While trying to figure out the remote, I accidently changed the menu language to something not supported by voice guidance so I lost the voice, it took a sighted persons help to undo what I did.

I already noted problems with the design of the remote in my initial post, so I won't rehash that here.

The TV has its manual in electronic form built in and the voice guidance system will read it to you. You can also get PDFs of the manual from Samsung's site.

TVs, have, for a long time been dedicated computers, especially with TV went digital. The difference now is that they are beginning to act like they are computers and not just a fancy TV.

I can see one feature this TV needs right now and that is the ability to lock the settings. I was just exploring some of the features and suddenly the voice guidance stopped and now the TV doesn't respond to some of the remote's buttons. I'm sure I accidently changed something but since I live alone I don't have a sighted person handy to help me figure out what I did.

The TVs software appears to have some bugs, frequently the TV doesn't bring up the menu when the menu button is pressed on the remote, it just says "TV" meaning it's returning to TV viewing after you've done something in the menus.

Something you might want to be aware of is that some of the more recent models of Samsung Smart TV's record audio for some of its voice recognition features and sends it off to a third party for processing, who also happens to use that information for marketing and advertising. Some people have expressed concern about the potential privacy implications, including whether or not the Smart TV's themselves are "eaves dropping" on peoples private conversations. (Link)

magurp244;

How well a TV with voice command could listen to conversations would depend on where the microphone is, if it's on the TV, I'd think it would have a hard time hearing anything over the sound the TV is producing. The TV may mute the sound when it is expecting a voice command.

I'm not really sure about this because I have yet to try it out. But when I do I'll treat it like I do Apple's Siri, I don't say anything I wouldn't say to a complete stranger.

There is a setting that allows you to disable the microphone , but the setting itself is disabled so you can't change it.
I also notice that the video description option on the TV is currently off, and that setting too is disabled, which means I can't turn it on.

Sebby,

I don't think your question is significant because the quality of a products accessibility is dependent on the people designing it. Whether accessibility is added to an existing product or is designed in from the ground up.

So designers who take accessibility seriously will do a better job adding it to an existing product than designers doing only a half hearted job on a new product that they are designing from the ground up.

Remember, iPhones weren't accessible until Apple released iOS 4, so the iPhone's accessibility was added on to an existing product and yet it is considered the most accessible smart phone.

That the Trecker Satnav system's accessibility is poorly design isn't because they added accessibility to an existing product. The blame for it having a poor accessibility design rests soley with the designers that thought it was a good idea.

Deciding whether a products accessibility is well designed based on whether the accessibility features were added on to an existing product instead of being designed in from the ground up is like judging a person based on whether they live in the country they were born in or immigrated to another country.

The unit the judgement is being made with isn't relevant to what is being judged.

In the case of the Samsung TV, it's probably a combination of both. They take an existing product, say a 2014 model. And start with that in designing the new 2015 model they are designing. Yet accessibility is being designed into the 2015 model from the beginning

The method works because many things in the design of a TV aren't going to change from one model to the next, so why keep designing the same thing over and over again?.

With my TV it feels like the accessibility was a part of its list of features from the beginning, because it does read everything the TV puts on the screen as text.

But Samsung made some design errors in other parts of the TV.

For example, instead of using the internet and partnering with someone else to provide the electronic program guides, Titantv.com and TiVo are two sources that have extensive channel and program information databases along with cable TV provider by area. Samsung decided to rely on cooperation from the various cable and satellite providers to work with them so the TV can pick up the program guides they transmit over their system for their set top boxes to pick up. Apparently, that's not working out too well. In my area none of the four cable TV providers are supported, so the electronic program guide doesn't work.

The remote is poorly designed for people that have to do things by feel. The button on it are small, are barely raised above the body of the remote, and are made of the same plastic the rest of the remote is. All of this makes the buttons harter to locate. Unlike the remote from my old TV which had larger buttons that were rubberized and raised above the rest of the remote making them easy to find. With the new remote you have to focus on what you are doing to find the right button.

In the accessibility menu Audio Description is turned off and the option is disabled so you can't turn it on. And so far I haven't been able to find any information about how to enable it so I can turn it on. This leads me to think that while accessibility may have been designed in from the beginning, it is not yet complete.

I've also noticed a number of other settings that are disabled so they can't be changed. Some of them make sense, such as setting the clock is disabled because I have the clock's mode set to auto, which means the TV probably get time from over the internet or from the time singal that most PBS station piggy back on their TV signal. So there no need to set the clock's time. But I can see no reason why the other disabled options should be.

Companies are finding more ways to pry into our lives. The TV has a feature called Smart Hub, at first I thought it was the flat brick shaped device that comes with the TV and connects to it via a custom cable that looks like an extra wide HDMI connector at each end. The TV itself has just the barest minimum of connections to allow it to function. If you need more connections that that, you have to hook up this brick, because it has additional HDMI conections as well as USB and optical digital audio out connections on it. Since I didn't yet need those extra connections, I haven't bothered to hook up the brick to the TV, it's still in its box along with its cables. But after reading more about it, Smart Hub appears to be just the software in the TV that puts all the different sources of content in one place. In order to use Smart Hub, you have to accept Samsung's Terms of Use and Privacy Policies, and you also have to create an account on samsun.com for the TV to log into. . Since I'm not yet sure what Smart Hub is or how it might be of benefit to me, I currently have it turned off. Whether doing that disables some of the TV's features, I don't know.

I still have my old TV just sitting out of the way. I also still have the box and all the packing material the new TV came in. I'll give it three weeks to resolve the issues I highlighted or to find out if they will be. If the issues don't appear that they ever will be resolved, I intend to return the TV. At this point all I've gained is that the TV tells me what channel it's on. I took care of that with the old inaccessible TV by not using the channel up and down buttons, instead I entered the channel numbers directly. That's not worth the price I paid for the new TV.

That may be so, but it's regrettably common.

I don't fundamentally think we disagree that, in principle, accessibility could be excellent either designed in or "Bolted on". But "Bolted on" is still an apt description, in most cases. With mainstream products, the hope is thus that such excellent accessibility portends good choices of design and philosophy; otherwise, as Dark says, it would only tend to indicate yet another expensive product that does less than an equivalent mainstream product.

I'm glad you like the TV, and I'll be interested to hear your further adventures with it. Like Dark, though, I don't think it would be worth the investment for me, personally.

One thing Samsung is going to have to do to make this TV meet accessibility standards is rewrite their manual. The current manual constantly refers to pictures or drawing rather than describing it in the text.

For example I was trying to figure out how to turn on the audio description feature, and this is what the manual says.

Notice that instead of naming the button on the remote, there is just the number 80, which refers to figure 80.

What gets me is that I think it would have been easier to name the button than to use a picture or drawing and refer to that.

Well, Samsung appears to have a ways yet to go before they'll have an accessible TV.

It turns out that Sebby may have been right about accessibility being added on to an existing product, though I have no idea if that is the case with this TV.

What I do know is the TV has a bunch of obviously unintended behaviors, as I had described in earlier posts.

After working with Samsung over the past two weeks trying to resolve the problems and getting nowhere. Then having Samsung direct me to a page on their web site where I could start a live chat with their remote troubleshooting people, and finding nothing at all on the page related to live chat or remote troubleshooting, I decided to give up.

Next week, the TV is being returned.

My last Samsung product wasn't a good experience either. It was another TV. It had problems that were never resolved, and the TV died after only three years of very light use.

I doubt I will ever buy another Samsung product again. Two products and both being bad experiences, kind of sets a pattern.

I'm not so sure that Samsung is adding accessibility to their products out of the goodness of their hearts.

In 2010 the US government passed the 21st century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. Among other things this law requires that manufacturers of communications and video equipment make their products equally accessible to blind and visually impaired people as they are for sighted people, by the end of 2016.

Three companies that I know of have already started releasing accessible products, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony.

With the Samsung TV I got, my impression is that the accessibility portion of the product doesn't get the level of testing the rest of the product does. Otherwise, no company that cares even a little about its reputation would ever release a product with so many obvious flaws.

It will also be interesting to see what happens with all these terms and conditions and privacy policies you have to accept to get the accessibility functions to work. Especially when they all say that the product collects usage and other data which is sent back to the manufacturer. One easy way to prevent this is to not hook the TV up to the internet, but then the accessibility and other features of the TV may not work.

In the past, connecting a TV up to the internet was always optional, but with this Samsung TV, if you want access to all the TVs features, this doesn't include streaming apps like Netflix or Amazon Instant Video, connecting the TV to the internet is required, even if the feature doesn't use the internet. They just want to make sure that data collected about you can be sent back. I can see a lawsuit being filed over that.

Because the microphone is in the remote, I don't think it is on all the time. That would drain the remotes batteries much faster than is usual for remotes, which could alert the owner that something is going on. But still, the voice command terms and conditions and privacy policy does say that it does collect usage data that will be sent back to the manufacturer. So just like Siri, I don't say anything personal when I know it's listening. On the other hand, if you decide you will not be using the voice command feature, you can't turn the microphone off. I saw a microphone option in the menus where you could disable the microphone if you wanted to, but the option was disabled, which means you can't access it to change it.

The only other Samsung product I've ever owned was another TV and it had software bugs that were never fixed and it died after only three years of very light use. So I wasn't very impressed with Samsung and vowed never to buy any product from Samsung again. Unfortunately, my options for an accessible TV are rather limited.

As far as the other two companies are concerned, I read that Panasonics first foray into accessibility was done in colaberation with RNIB, so those TVs only reached the UK and Australia, which doesn't do US residents any good.

And Sony's accessible TV is supposed to be based on Android, and my last experience with Android's accessibility wasn't all that good. So, if Sony is depending on Android's built in accessibility and that hasn't improved much since I last had an Android device, which was about two years ago, I'm not sure what to expect from them.

Personally, I've been very happy with every Panasonic product I've ever bought, so given a choice, I'd prefer to get a TV from them.

I wish I had that tv!