Tag: Accessibility

Spotify Joins the Valuable 500 With a Commitment to Disability Inclusion

December 3, 2021

Product accessibility has always been a focus for Spotify. Earlier this year, we introduced improvements to Spotify’s mobile experience that included buttons with increased readability features, options for text resizing, and a beta for podcast transcripts. 

We recognize, however, that there is more work to be done to ensure an inclusive experience for listeners, as well as for our artists and creators. So today, we are reaffirming our focus on accessibility and announcing that Spotify has joined the Valuable 500, a global network of companies committed to disability inclusion.

At Spotify, our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. You are welcome as you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Diversity, inclusion, and belonging are at the heart of Spotify, and we are committed to being accessible for all. 

Here’s how we’re committing to the Valuable 500 goals across our workplace, platform, and users:

Our bandmates: The more perspectives we have represented and amplified within the halls of Spotify, the more we will all contribute, thrive, and be brilliant. We are committed to embedding disability inclusion and accessibility in everything we do for our people around the world. We will continue to develop our global mental health initiative, Heart & Soul, and are committed to making our global office spaces fully accessible and inclusive. 

Listeners: Spotify is part of the lives of more than 381 million people around the world, and ensuring our platform is accessible to everyone is a priority. Our dedicated Accessibility team is laser focused on creating inclusive experiences for all and will continue to ensure we are building a product with accessibility at its core. 

Artists and creators: Our platform is powerful, and we’re using it to amplify the voices, stories, and cultures of marginalized and underrepresented communities around the world. We will continue to develop our support for artists and creators with disabilities and use our platform to share their talents.

We all have the best intentions, but for us, that isn’t enough. To foster a diverse and inclusive culture, we’ve put a dedicated global Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging strategy into action. Read more about our work here. 

 

The Valuable 500 was launched in 2019 by Caroline Casey, an award-winning social entrepreneur. On our Spot On! podcast, a show about the intersection of leadership and diversity, listeners can hear Caroline share more about the global network and learn tips on how to break the silence on disability.

 

3 Updates on the Spotify Mobile Experience to Help Improve Accessibility

May 18, 2021

Spotify is part of the lives of over 356 million people around the world—and we’re cognizant that many of our users have different access needs. We’re continuously making accessibility improvements to the experience to help many of our users enjoy the songs and podcasts they love more easily. So today, we’re introducing three updates to Spotify on iOS and Android: buttons with increased readability features, options for text resizing, and a beta for podcast transcripts. 

These will all be rolling out in the coming weeks. We believe each change is part of our long-term mission to create a platform where everyone can enjoy an immersive artistic experience.  

1. All buttoned up 

When you use Spotify, you’re constantly tapping buttons to shuffle a playlist or start a listening session. Today, you may notice some changes to these buttons in terms of color, text formatting, and size. Our aim is to make it easier for low-vision and visually impaired users to spot and engage with these actions when using Spotify on their phones. The update can also aid users in situations where there’s low lighting or high screen reflections. Plus, changing the text formatting from all caps creates more space for translation or localization for the more than 60 languages Spotify currently supports.

2. Living large


The Spotify app already reflects system-wide text size changes, known as Dynamic Type, to a certain extent. With the latest accessibility updates, we’re enabling users to increase the text even more, improving overall navigation on the app and giving listeners greater control to personalize their experience. Users can adjust their text size under Settings via iOS to meet their specific visual needs and preferences.

Here’s how:

  1. On your phone, head to Settings > Accessibility, then select “Display & Text Size.”
  2. Tap “Larger Text” for larger font options.
  3. Drag the slider to select the font size you want.
  4. Making the text too large might make it hard to tap buttons or other functions within the Spotify app. You can always go back to your phone settings and adjust the font size as needed.

3. Spell it out

In the coming weeks, we’re also introducing auto-generated podcast transcripts. This is a limited beta for select Spotify Original and Exclusive podcasts across iOS and Android. The new feature will automatically generate transcripts for these shows, allowing users to read the text of the specific podcasts on their phones either with or without sound. Users will also be able to quickly scroll and navigate through specific episodes and click on any written paragraph to start playing from that point.

This is just the first step for the podcast transcript experience: Our overall ambition is to enable transcripts across all podcasts on Spotify. As always, we want to know your thoughts, so head over to our Community to share your feedback. 

We care deeply about creating an inclusive experience, which is why we’re working with people with disabilities to conduct user research and plan to evaluate and assess our ideas on an ongoing basis. We want to make Spotify available to everyone, and with these new updates, we’re taking steps to progress toward that goal.