Netflix's head of accessibility grew up with deaf parents, and it made her more aware that TV subtitles can be terrible

• Netflix's first Director of Product Accessibility, Heather Dowdy, told Insider what drives her.
• Growing up with deaf parents, she was aware of gaps in subtitles and when they "messed up."
• Netflix found that 80% of its viewers use subtitles at least once a month.

It was only when she watched TV at a friend's house as a child that Heather Dowdy realized people didn't always use subtitles.

Dowdy, who was hired as Netflix's first director of product accessibility last year, used to watch shows like "Family Matters" at home when she grew up in Chicago in the 1990s. 

The subtitles would always be on, because her parents are deaf. "That's what my parents automatically had," she told Insider.

This experience shapes her job at Netflix, where she is tasked with making the platform more accessible to people with disabilities.

Having deaf parents meant she was constantly aware of mistakes and gaps in subtitles, she said. "Because I have the privilege of hearing, I could tell, 'Oh, they really messed that up — you're totally missing the really important point.'"

In fact, some people with hearing loss call subtitles "craptions," she said.

According to the US Census, 11.5 million Americans have some sort of hearing impairment, ranging from difficulty in hearing conversation to total hearing loss.

But TV subtitles are now used far more widely than by people who are deaf or hard of hearing. 

About 40% of Netflix's global users use them all the time, while 80% use them at least once a month, according to the company's internal data. Dowdy said that's due in part to people watching more than one screen at a time, so text helps them follow the story.

"That's more than people that have a disability — that's a lot of other folks that are benefiting from a technology that was initially, you know, created to support people with hearing aids," she said.

The fact that her work impacts a far wider audience than those with disabilities is a plus for Dowdy. "That's really what my role is about — there are so many benefits to looking at the disability community and then understanding how that benefits all of us," she said.

"The great thing is we don't have to know if you have a disability, we just are focused on what exactly is the feature that allows you to participate."

'Feedback is crucial'

Dowdy said people who are hard of hearing or deaf aren't included enough in the process of making subtitles. "Feedback is crucial in making sure we are on the right track," she said, noting that the focus groups she holds "don't hold back on feedback at all."

She proactively engages with disability organizations and holds focus groups, which is a first for Netflix. A spokesperson for the streamer told Insider it had mainly been reactive to the disability community before hiring Dowdy.

Feedback from blind and visually impaired people has added richness to Netflix's audio descriptions, or extra audio that explains visual elements of a show for people who are blind or visually impaired, including "things like the texture of skin and hair, and all of these other things that add context," Dowdy said.

The subtitles of Netflix's latest series of "Stranger Things," which aired in May, received praise for its vivid audio descriptions like "tentacles undulating moistly," "wet footsteps squelch," and "unearthly susurration."

"You have folks that thought it was too much for them, even in the new series," Dowdy acknowledged, "but the point is people are watching and are being included, and I'll take that over 'I can't access it at all.'"

This year, President Biden appointed Dowdy to the US Access Board, the government agency that works on accessibility.

She has published internal accessibility guidelines and made shows and films with characters with disabilities easier to discover on the platform by creating collections of content, and started rolling out "badges" that show when films have audio descriptions and subtitles.

'It really is a journey'

Dowdy studied at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and graduated with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering. She said that she always wanted to use her degree to improve access to technology for disabled people. 

She went on to work for Motorola as a product manager with the accessibility engineering team, before joining Microsoft, where she led a program that funded AI startups focused on accessible tech.

She's driven by the fact that disabled people can be left behind by tech or given second-rate options. She said it's frustrating, for example, that she can't share content from YouTube or Instagram with her friends who are deaf, because of the poor quality of the automated transcription.

Dowdy once went to the movies with a deaf young person she was mentoring. The were given a handheld device that showed subtitles for the film. When the movie started, it became clear the device had no battery left. "The theater didn't think that they needed to be charged in between movies," she said. 

"I've been so challenged with how to take a person's personal experience and open up access for them and more folks like them — and then for everyone," Dowdy said.

This fits with her approach to accessibility: "You solve for one and you extend it to many."

'It isn't going to be perfect'

Netflix outsources its subtitles to third-party agencies, and they are either automated or manually written. Dowdy doesn't have a preference: "We're open to whatever combination and whatever avenues get us to scale and quality."

"I think it's really important to understand where technology can really complement humans," she said. "I have seen where you can have such a hybrid approach where, you know, the tech gets you so far and then humans are able to correct and really kind of bring in that context that's needed."

Dowdy's next challenge is to create subtitles and audio descriptions in more languages for Netflix users. Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and French are rolling out over the next year, and the platform will eventually offer accessibility in 20 languages.

Dowdy wrote in a May blog post that "for decades, your access to entertainment was determined by where you lived and what language you spoke," meaning that until recently people who needed audio descriptions or subtitles "could only enjoy a story if it was made in their local language."

She said Netflix, like all platforms, has a way to go on accessibility: "It really is a journey and it isn't going to be perfect — it is constant iteration."