I've been a Fios customer since September, 2010. The accessibility
features in the current set-top boxes is relatively new--about two years
now, I think. On the whole, it's very accessible, just not 100% so.
Depending on which box you get, and there are at least two, possibly
three different ones, the position in the menu tree for turning
accessibility on differs, but the basic concept is the same. You have to
press the remote's MENU button, navigate to Settings, then to
Accessibility,and the rest should be intuitive when you get to that
branch of the menu tree. In fact, some boxes will tell you when you get
to the accessibility option without having to explicitly turn it on. I
think this is one of the stupidest things ever, since there is no
documented way of getting to that option to begin with, so what are you
supposed to do, hunt around for it? So you'll definitely need assistance
to turn it on. Verizon can provide you that assistance over the phone by
looking up which box you have, and telling you which buttons to pres. If
you follow their directions to the letter, it will work.
Now, what you get when you turn accessibility on isn't perfect. For
instance, the search option doesn't talk at all, but browsing the
electronic program guide, or EPG, does. None of the help screens speak.
Also, pressing the big round INFO button doesn't give details of what
you're watching, only the summary screen is spoken. That is, it speaks
the name of the show, season number, episode number and name, but no
details, such as plot, stars, etc. On the music channels, you only get
to hear the channel name, not the name of the playing track. On most
music channels, there is an on-screen scroll of information about either
the currently playing artist, or the channel's genre, which also is not
voiced.
ON the whole, it's quite useful and usable, just not to the detailed
level some might want.
As for the phone or computer application, I also give that less than
high marks. Everything's there--descriptions, ability to browse and use
the EPG, direct channel tuning, all that--but the layout is anything but
optimal, and the on-screen keyboard for channel selection by number has
a horrid timeout problem, which means no matter how fast you are with a
phone and your phone's screen reader, you'll never be fast enough to
type more than two digits of a channel number before the software thinks
you're done and tunes your set-top box to that two-digit channel number.
Example: CoziTV is Fios channel 460. If I type 4, then 6, while I'm
finding the 0 and pressing it, the timeout has already stopped taking
input from the on-screen keyboard, so my box gets set to channel 46.
Another problem is that the on-screen keyboard is sometimes overlaid
with part of the rest of the controls and options, so it's sometimes not
possible to display the whole keypad, making even attempting to select a
channel by number most difficult, if not altogether impossible. Of
course, users that don't require a screen reader can simply push the
rest of the stuff out of the way, revealing the full keyboard. I'm not
sure whether a Bluetooth keyboard would or could solve this problem, and
to be fair, there may have been updates to the application since last I
tried it, which was probably about four years ago, that may have solved
this and other accessibility problems.
Hope this helps.
On 10/16/2018 5:19 AM, Larry Smith wrote:
Is there anyone on this list using verizon FIOS TV set top box? If so, is it
accessible using the remote control? Also, can the set-top-box and TV content
be access using the mobile app? I currently have directv. I am very unhappy
with them! Thanks
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