Who doesn’t look forward to relaxing after a long week with a good show or movie, and no matter what top entertainment apps you use for streaming, you have a wide range of great content to choose from. Whether you’re interested in watching international programming or just want to ensure you don’t miss anything, subtitles play an essential role in accessibility. Right now, Netflix is offering a precious improvement to how you can enjoy subtitles on your TV as it adds the option to customize how it looks.
Adjusting the appearance and position of subtitles manually isn’t a big deal for most Android and desktop media players. Still, the service you choose will limit what you can do when it comes to online streaming. Netflix already supports changing the appearance of subtitles on the web, but TechCrunch reports that the controls are now also available when streaming to your TV.
To customize subtitles, Netflix offers a choice of three different font sizes and four preset styles with additional text and background colors. You can choose white text with no background, white text with a drop shadow, black text with a white background, or yellow text with a black background. The options are still limited, but it’s still a big step forward with all the most popular options available now.
The ability to adjust the appearance of subtitles may seem like a simple convenience or slight visual adjustment to most people. Still, visual or hearing impairments users should understand the real implications here. Netflix’s standard subtitles can be challenging to read when overlaid with low-light footage, and the new style changes, in large part, can help those with color sensitivities.
In fact, the move is Netflix’s latest attempt to improve the accessibility of its platform and the content it hosts. This change is rolling out on smart and connected TVs for everyone, but currently only works in some languages.
