Accessibility Report 2025
Accessibility is one of the fundamental principles of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. In practice, accessibility of audiovisual media primarily means implementing measures such as subtitling, sign language, audio description, or simple/easy-to-understand language. The goal is to enable barrier-free media use and, thereby, social participation. Media should also be discoverable, accessible, and usable by people with disabilities in the same way as for everyone else—without undue difficulty and, in principle, without the need for assistance from others.
To achieve this goal, media service providers—with certain exceptions—are required to gradually increase the proportion of accessible content in their programming and to report on this progress.
The Accessibility Report therefore provides a more detailed overview of the situation in Austria and the changes that have taken place in recent years. It is based on the figures reported by media service providers to KommAustria for the year 2025.
These figures show, among other things, that entertainment programs are predominantly made accessible, but that there has also been an increase in accessible informational content compared to previous years. It also shows that subtitling is by far the most commonly used measure to improve accessibility. The reason for this is that subtitling is easier and more cost-effective to implement compared to other measures. Technological advances are also helping to make accessibility easier to implement.