The You-sability and Accessibility of YouTube
I use YouTube all the time—for me, it’s simultaneously a guilty pleasure and a valuable learning platform. When I have time to kill (and sometimes even when I don’t..), I can be found browsing YouTube for cat videos or catching up on recent uploads from my subscriptions. Other times, when I want to learn how to do something (change the oil in my car, do a smokey eye), I can usually find a video that’s at least decently instructive on YouTube.
Part of what makes YouTube such a staple for me is that it is so easy and enjoyable to use. It meets all five of the basic usability heuristics:
- Learnability. Features function as you would expect (pressing the play button starts the video; hovering over the volume control causes the volume slider to pop out to the right; buffering status is clearly indicated).
- Efficiency. Those who’ve watched more than a couple videos on YouTube have probably figured out that hitting the left and right arrow keys scrubs forward and backward, hitting a number key will jump to different points in the video, and hitting the space bar will start and stop the video (if you’ve interacted with the video player; if you’ve just clicked off of the player, hitting the space bar will scroll you down the page). There’s also a second layer of shortcuts that are not immediately obvious — to name just a few: “K” plays and pauses the video, “J” rewinds 10 seconds, “L” fast-fowards 10 seconds, and “M” mutes the audio.
- Memorability. If you need to change something in your settings or need help with something, the Settings and Help options are easily accessible via the hamburger menu in the upper left corner.
- Minimizing errors. Actions on YouTube are easy to undo. Accidentally hit the “Subscribe” button? Simply hit it again to unsubscribe. Buttons are either clearly labeled with their function upon hover, or so clearly indicate their function that no label is needed at all (e.g. the “Play” button).
- Satisfaction. This one is difficult to measure, but according to its Net Promoter Score (NPS) determined in 2015, 59% would recommend YouTube to friends and family. The average NPS score for all tested internet consumer brands is 54%, indicating that users are on average more satisfied with their experiences with YouTube than with other internet consumer brands.

For those with impairments, YouTube is also quite accessible. Transcripts of videos can be displayed by selecting the horizontal ellipsis icon below the video and selecting “Open transcript.” Captions can be turned on by selecting the “CC” icon in the player window, and the previously-mentioned keyboard shortcuts can be used to control the video.
Although the automatically-generated captions are not always accurate, YouTube is taking active measures to improve their quality. YouTube claims it has improved “accuracy by 50% for videos in English by improving speech recognition and machine-learning algorithms.” Video publishers also have the option of reviewing and editing the auto-generated captions, submitting their own captions, or letting the community submit translations for the captions.
YouTube’s dedication to making its site easy to use and increasingly more accessible seems to be paying off nicely. As technologies continue to improve, it will be interesting to see what other improvements YouTube will end up making to improve its usability and accessibility.