Sling’s Accessibility should be in a Sling.

Sling TV is an online cable service that brings cable TV channels to your smartphone, tablet, and computer. While Sling TV brings much to the table like affordable plans and a 7 day free trial, their accessibility and app features have much to be improved upon. Lets take a look at both of these things.

Sling Accessibility

Sling TV allows for users to sign up and sign in to the app, but the accessibility stops there for the most part. While users can find the menu and guide, a user can not browse the channel listings that are in the app. Visually, the channel listings are in a scrollable control that slides left and right and once an option appears in the middle of the screen then that channel’s listings appear. This functionality does not work with VoiceOver, and the schedules will also only tell the times that something is to be shown. The show title only appears as an image with no alt text included.

Sling TV App Features

While iOS has moved on the Sling TV app has not. While using the Sling app on iPad I noticed that they do not support Picture in Picture support at this time, and the interface is still that of an iOS 7 app that does not scale with size classes as most modern apps do.

Conclusion

While Sling TV provides a great online based cable TV experience, it still lacks features that other services provide, and VoiceOver users will find that the app lacks the accessibility required for everyday use. As a low vision user I plan to continue my subscription after my trial, but milage will vary when this app is concerned. Hopefully support for accessibility and feature sets will improve when single sign on and the TV app are released to the public because they both support Sling TV.

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