Globally, including in India, all English language content on streaming or Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms offers English captions. We owe this to the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) in the US. In 2012 NAD reached a settlement with Netflix to provide captions on 100 percent of its streaming content within two years of the settlement date. Back then, it was a momentous win for the cause of media access for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH). For future generations of DHH persons who could communicate in and understand English, it made all English entertainment accessible.What those without a hearing disability – many of us reading this op-ed – may not fully acknowledge is that the captions contributed to our own media access and more. People lose their hearing as they age. Entertainment is often consumed in conversational or noisy environments. English is spoken in a variety of unintelligible accents. Viewers have picked up and sharpened their language abilities with the help of captions and translated subtitles. Everyone seems to have a subtitle story of how it helped them or their children.The number of people in the US who consume streaming content in English with English captions is extremely high and growing, driven by reasons beyond just hearing impairment/ Seventy percent of Gen Z uses captions most of the time.Accessibility in Indian languagesIn India, close to 85% of the total video content viewing pie is in Indian languages and only 15% is in English. What then is the percentage of Indian language content with captions in the ‘same’ language as the audio? We conducted a primary analysis of 1000 Indian language titles sampled from 26 OTTs. We found (Chart 1) that the top three OTTs offering Same Language Captions (SLC) on their Indian language content library are: Netflix (30%), Amazon Prime Video (7%) and JioHotstar (1%), with a combined 70% market share. The provision of Audio Description (AD) for the Visually Impaired (VI) is significantly lower. JioHotstar has AD on 17% Indian language content and Netflix and Amazon Prime Video tied at 7%. The remaining 23 OTTs have no Indian language content with SLC or AD.Chart 1: Indian language content on OTTs with Same Language Captions (SLC)OTT guidelinesThirteen years after NAD vs. Netflix in the US, history is repeating itself in India, sparked by Akshat Baldwa, a young law graduate in his twenties who is blind. He has filed two major public interest litigations (PILs) in the Delhi high court, eventually compelling policy and the entertainment industry toward a mandatory adoption of accessibility standards for all content.The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting recently issued time-bound draft guidelines to mandate SLC or Indian Sign Language (ISL) and AD on all new OTT content within six months of notification and on all content within two years. This builds on another pathbreaking policy, the Cinematograph (Certification) Rules, 2024 that mandates film producers to deposit accessibility files for SLC or ISL and AD at the time of certification. All Indian language films will have to comply starting in March 2026.The new guidelines have catapulted India at the forefront of media accessibility on OTTs globally. All countries that are richly multilingual will be watching how India achieves quality implementation and, importantly, for what purposes.Purpose mattersThe purposes for which India frames and implements the OTT guidelines will ultimately guide and determine the importance, resources, design, quality, popularity and ownership by all state and central government, industry and civil society stakeholders. Benefiting the estimated 65 million DHH and 70 million VI is purpose enough, yet, if we limit our understanding to just that, the industry will continue to seek custom solutions for a “narrow” slice of consumers, which it is clearly not. Media accessibility is not a cost but an opportunity.Recall that Netflix fought English captions on English content in 2012 and is now reaping the commercial benefits of that settlement. Netflix could not have anticipated that the majority of viewers who are hearing and who speak English fluently, like in the US, have a demand for English SLC on English content. Why wouldn’t the same logic apply to Indian language content, for Indians in India and the large Indian diaspora seeking effective resources to pick up an Indian language, for example?In public interest, a critically important purpose of accessibility features and especially subtitles in the ‘same’ language on Indian language content is reading literacy. For nearly two decades since the reading skills of school children have been measured nationally, we know that half of India’s rural school children in Class 5, cannot read at Class 2 level.Enter SLC on any entertainment content that a billion children, youth, and adults consume for an average 3-4 hours every day on a screen. Consider the massive number of matching text-sound exposures they would get throughout their life, in their language and content of choice, which they watch with some passion. The question then is, how can anyone who has picked up early reading skills in school or anywhere, not become a fluent reader with a lifetime or 70-odd years of reading along?Based on primary surveys, it is clear that school children and youth in rural areas are hungry for opportunities to advance their literacy and language ability in their Indian language and in English. Adults too want to advance their literacy skills, if they could privately, and go to any extent to advance their children’s reading skills and education.In a world that has come to expect corporate responsibility, there sometimes comes an opportunity that allows for public interest to meld with corporate interest. The OTTs that contemplate, design and implement for the confluence of purposes – from accessibility, to reading literacy, to language learning – will win the national embrace. The ones that want to check a box will likely check out.Brij Kothari is an Adjunct Professor at IIT-Delhi’s School of Public Policy and Leads the Billion Readers (BIRD) initiative.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.