Help with Virgin TV for someone who is vision impaired

Options
Dwpbill
Dwpbill Online Community Member Posts: 2 Listener
edited February 2021 in Coffee lounge
Its for my Mum who is 93, bedbound and more or less blind.  She is registered partially sighted but an eye consultant would diagnose her as blind if we went that far.
Anyway she has Virgin Tv on a Tivo box which was recently installed as her old box was considered out of date and had to replaced.  I used to be able to more or less program the box for her in that I could set it so it would go to whatever channel and program I chose for her.  It was very handy and she didnt need to interact with the box at all as it would happen automatically.  The best I can do now is to set a reminder and then either record or watch, but that requires an interaction to a prompt on screen which she couldn't see. 
There doesn't seem to be anything on her actual TV that does the same thig either.
Ive checked the accessibilty stuff on the Virgin site but cant find anything there.  I havent rang them due to the enormous wait time and I suspect I'm just going to be told there isnt anything available
She has the top TV package with them but is basically stuck watching ITV1 unless she goes rogue and presses numbers on the remote.
I hope you understand 

Comments

  • Ross_Alumni
    Ross_Alumni Scope alumni Posts: 7,611 Championing
    Hi @Dwpbill

    Welcome to the community. 

    Sorry to hear this is an issue for your mum at the moment, accessible TV services and TV guides are hard to come by, as a severely sight impaired person myself I can empathise. It was only recently that Freeview launched an accessible TV guide, which is a step in the right direction.

    I'm sorry to say that if you've already looked at the accessibility information on the Virgin website, and your mum is contracted in with them,  then your only choice may be to contact them to see if there's anything they can do. 

    Is there not a dedicated section on the Tevo box for accessibility? 
  • MarkM88
    MarkM88 Online Community Member Posts: 3,119 Connected
    This is worth a read:

    https://www.virginmedia.com/help/accessibility
  • Sandy_123
    Sandy_123 Scope Member Posts: 63,123 Championing
    That link looks spot on. @Dwpbill hopefully you can get it all set up soon
  • Dwpbill
    Dwpbill Online Community Member Posts: 2 Listener
    Many thanks for your prompt replies.  I'm going to give the remote tv control a go and I shall also ring Virgin.  all I want to do is to be able to setup channel for her so she doesnt have to do anything herself. ITV put racing on ITV1 occasionally and there's also rugby and football.  I used to program the tv to flip over to say Drama and she could watch a few things on there and then back to ITV for the News and her soaps.  She didnt have to do anything other than watch and probably wonder what was going on LOL
    Ive tried audio description with her and she didnt like that.  I'm not sure she always knows what she is watching anyway so she was confused.
    Via the TV guide you can set reminders but you need to interact with them which she cant do

    The app looks useful although there is nothing I can program but I could change channels remotely but I'd need to do that before the program.  But its a step further on.
    Again thanks.  Once I speak to Virgin if I find out anything useful I will post

Categories