Ofcom's streaming access code: what 80% subtitles, 10% audio description and 5% signing mean for producers
The largest streaming services are heading for broadcast-style access quotas. The final code is due between October and December, and the extra work starts to land from late 2027.
Ofcom's consultation on its Tier 1 Accessibility Code closed at 5pm on 7 August 2026. The regulator says it aims to publish the final code "in Q3 2026/27". Ofcom's year starts in April, so that means October to December 2026. As of 28 September its page still reads "pending statement".
When it lands, the biggest streaming services will be working to access quotas of the kind broadcast channels have lived with for years.
Who is caught
The Media Act 2024 brings large on-demand services much closer to broadcast rules. On 24 February 2026 the Creative Industries Minister, Ian Murray, told Parliament that any on-demand service with more than 500,000 UK users would become "Tier 1". He said that would capture "over 20" services, including Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+. The public service broadcasters' players are covered too: ITVX, Channel 4, Channel 5, S4C and STV. BBC iPlayer stays under the Broadcasting Code, with its own 90% subtitling target.
The ladder
Ofcom published the draft on 14 May and corrected it on 15 July to fix the interim signing figures. The quotas phase in from the first anniversary of the final code, or from the date a service becomes Tier 1 if that is later:
- Year 1: 20% subtitled, 2.5% audio described, 1.5% signed
- Year 2: 40%, 5% and 2.5%
- Year 3: 60%, 7.5% and 4%
- Year 4 onwards: 80%, 10% and 5%
On that timetable the first-year quotas would apply from late 2027 at the earliest. Broadband TV News reported maximum fines of £250,000 per breach or 5% of qualifying revenue.
The two details that matter more than the percentages
Signing can be sign-presented. The draft counts both in-vision interpretation and sign-presented content, where a deaf presenter fronts the programme in sign language. Ofcom cites LumoTV research finding that 91% of deaf signers preferred sign-presented programmes.
Quality is part of the count. Poor-quality access services will not count towards the quotas, and services will have to report on quality every year. A cheap track that doesn't work for its audience is, in quota terms, no track at all.
What a producer can do now
The quotas sit with the platforms. Our reading is that the extra work lands on whoever delivers the programmes, and that a series commissioned in the next year could well be delivered after the first quotas start.
- Ask the platform what access versions it will want on delivery, and put the answer in the budget on day one.
- Leave room in the edit. Audio description has to fit in the gaps between dialogue: sometimes eight seconds, sometimes under two. A cut that is wall-to-wall talk gives a describer nothing to work with.
- Record description to picture. Read against the running programme in a treated room, the description sits in the gaps rather than being cut into them afterwards. With quality now counted, that difference matters.
- Treat signing as a shoot. An interpreter in vision or a deaf presenter has to be filmed, lit and recorded like any other contributor. Plan it before picture lock, not after.
Where we fit, and where we don't
We record audio description in the podcast studio: a treated room with a 55-inch panel to work against, Shure microphones through a Dante-networked desk and an engineer on every session. It is the same set-up we use for ADR and dialogue to picture, which is a close cousin of the job. We can record a script you already have or bring in a describer to write one, and it is quoted per project. We aren't a broadcast access-services house. If you need description across a whole schedule, we'll say on the first call that we're the wrong people.
Signed and sign-presented material has to be filmed somewhere. The Green Space is a pre-lit 3.6m by 2.4m chroma stage with an integrated autocue, from £40 an hour +VAT, £140 for a half day or £260 for a full day. A sign-presented programme that needs a full-length presenter or a set goes on the White Space cove, 5.3m by 7.1m with 360-degree blackout, from £295+VAT for a half day.
If you're delivering to a streamer next year and want to talk through what the access versions will need, send us the running time and we'll tell you what we can do and what we can't.
Sources
- UK Parliament, Written statement HCWS1354 by Ian Murray, 24 February 2026
- Broadband TV News, UK's biggest VOD services set for tougher Ofcom rules under Media Act rollout, 24 February 2026
- Ofcom, Tier 1 Accessibility Code (status: pending statement), 14 May 2026, updated 15 July 2026
- Ofcom, Stronger protections for UK audiences under new content and accessibility standards for streaming services, 14 May 2026
- Ofcom, Consultation: Tier 1 Accessibility Code (Table 1, quotas), 14 May 2026
- CMS, Media Act 2024: Ofcom releases the Tier 1 Standards Code and Accessibility Code, 22 May 2026
- Liam O'Dell, Ofcom Tier 1 access code consultation and the LumoTV research, 14 May 2026
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