New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Thursday issued a notice to Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, parent company of ZEE5, on grounds of the OTT platform being inaccessible to persons with disabilities, particularly blind persons, who depend on the screen-reader assistive technology to navigate such digital platforms.
A bench of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma issued notice to the platform on the plea filed by disability rights lawyer Rahul Bajaj, who was diagnosed with 100 percent visual impairment.
In his plea, Bajaj highlighted that he is a disability rights expert, and a practicing lawyer committed to eliminating barriers to digital accessibility for PwDs.
The case will be taken up next on 17 September, this year.
During Thursday’s hearing, the single-judge bench orally enquired why no one had appeared on behalf of the OTT platform in court. On top of this, the petitioner who appeared in person said that at least interim steps should be taken so that visually-impaired persons, too, could enjoy the ongoing FIFA World Cup at par with their able-bodied counterparts. The court obliged with this, and ordered: “In the meantime, let steps be taken to make the platform accessible”.
Flagging the urgency of the matter in light of Zee5 holding the exclusive rights to broadcast the FIFA World Cup 2026 in India, the plea said that since the tournament is of considerable interest to the public, the same should be made accessible to everyone equally.
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What the plea argues
The plea points out that people with blindness and low vision access the computer with the help of a screen reader software.
“A screen reader reads out the content which is given on the screen in a human-like voice. In order to function well with a screen reader, an app or website needs to be accessible” or in compliance with the guidelines issued by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the plea says.
These guidelines are based on globally accepted parameters for digital accessibility, the plea says while adding that under Section 46 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, all service providers have to comply with the prescribed accessibility standards within a period of two years. The plea also said that in May 2025, this two-year compliance window expired.
Besides this, other guidelines furnished on Indian government websites which contained the parameters for digital accessibility, also had to be complied with by June, 2019, the plea said while adding that all digital platforms operating in the Indian market are presently under a “continuing statutory obligation” to ensure they are accessible for persons with disabilities.
The broader issue outlined in the plea was that the platform Zee5 as a whole is also inaccessible from the get-go, as even purchasing a subscription of the OTT platform is a “serious challenge”, owing to factors like unlabelled buttons, and an otherwise inaccessible interface, which cannot be meaningfully navigated using a screen reader.
In the scenario where one manages to get a subscription of the platform, it suffers from “pervasive barriers” such as wrongly labelled controls, unstable focus, inaccessible media player, poor content discovery and dynamic interface, and an automatic cursor movement, the plea adds.
For these reasons, the petitioner argued that the fundamental rights of disabled persons to equality, freedom of speech and expression and life, are being violated. Relying on the Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling in Pragya Prasun vs Union of India, the plea argued that the right to digital access is an integral part of the right to life under Article 21.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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