Spotify is a popular audio streaming service with over 574 million users. You can stream anything on Spotify, from music to audiobooks to podcasts on various topics. The site has been around since 2006 and is consistently on the list of customers' preferred audio streaming services, alongside Apple Music and Pandora.
With Spotify's popularity and growth, it’s important to consider its accessibility. What accessibility features does Spotify offer? How accessible is the site and app overall? Is there anything they can do to improve? Let’s look at Spotify and attempt to answer these questions.
Accessibility features of the site
Spotify offers many good accessibility features for its website. The website is well-optimized for screen readers and other assistive tech. Using Spotify through apps like Apple’s VoiceOver is very streamlined, with few glitches. Other assistive tech, such as screen magnification, also connects well with Spotify. Optimization of assistive tech is a great way that Spotify demonstrates accessibility.
Keyboard navigation is another element of Spotify that works well. Using only your keyboard, you can navigate through the website to find songs, play them, and even add them to playlists using keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard navigation is important for people with disabilities that affect their fine motor skills, for whom operating a mouse is difficult or impossible. Having Spotify be totally keyboard navigable is a huge plus towards accessibility.
Spotify also has a clear accessibility statement on its website. Although this isn’t necessarily an accessibility feature, it demonstrates Spotify’s commitment to accessibility as a company and website. Accessibility statements are an opportunity for a company or brand to showcase what they value in accessibility. Spotify values its platform to be “...usable by all people…to make every encounter with our products inclusive.”
Accessibility features of the app
Though users utilize the website, most listeners use Spotify primarily through their app. Listeners can use the app on smartphones, tablets, and even Smart TVs. It is important to note that Spotify's app has several accessibility features similar to its website.
Spotify is compatible with digital assistants, like Siri or Google Assistant. This enables a user to give voice commands to the app and have their digital assistant of choice carry out the command, such as playing a certain song or playlist. This is highly accessible for those who utilize speech-to-text or voice commands for their smartphones and apps and allows Spotify to be accessible.
Spotify has also rolled out changes to the text on their app in 2021 to make it more accessible. Now, the app offers the option to resize the text, making it more easily readable to individual users. The spacing between text is also more accessible, with the line height and spacing even and uniform across the app.
Alongside the text size changes, Spotify also introduced a beta program to offer transcripts of podcasts on the app. Along with the lyrics they already offer, this is a wonderful accessibility feature for people with hearing disabilities or auditory processing disorders, among other disabilities that make hearing comprehension difficult.
Possible improvements
Although Spotify is doing well regarding accessibility, there is still room for improvement. Right now, the default option for the app is “dark mode.” Dark mode means that the background of the site and app is dark, with white writing. There are many benefits to dark mode, but some people may find a light mode more accessible, where the background is white with black text. Spotify, unfortunately, does not currently offer an official light mode. To get a light mode, users have to mess around in different accessibility settings, and the trick is not well known. The company can improve upon this aspect.
Spotify’s buttons are also an ongoing issue. While they addressed text size changes and podcast transcripts in a recent update, they could do more to make buttons more accessible, including changing color, formatting, and size. For example, the scroll bar is very small and hard to tap onto, requiring precise movements. This is not accessible, and adjusting to this, in particular, could go a long way.
Conclusion
Spotify, an audio streaming service, is a fairly accessible website and app. It has many good features, like optimization for assistive technology and a commitment to accessibility, but there is always room for improvement. Small changes Spotify could make, like adding a light mode or further increasing the accessibility of the buttons, could go a long way in making the website and app even more accessible.
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