Hello, I’m Sally and I’m proud to be part of the team that helped make the new CBeebies iPlayer that launched recently for computers, tablets and mobiles.
The new CBeebies iPlayer has been specially designed to be fun and intuitive for little ones to use while making it easier for parents to ensure their child stays in a safe place enjoying age-appropriate shows. There are now lots more pictures to help little ones recognise their favourite CBeebies shows and characters and find their way around. It will also be easier to find new things that your child might enjoy including the most popular shows on CBeebies but also hidden gems that we think your little ones might like.
Collections
The new CBeebies iPlayer also includes a brand new collections feature which groups together shows by series, seasons, events or themes. We know how popular special events such as Dinosaur Week are with the CBeebies audience, and collections allow us to group together all the programmes associated with a special event or theme in one place.
Safety
The safety of children who use our online services is something we take very seriously, so we have built many new safety features into the Children’s iPlayer pages. These are designed to help keep the children’s channels (CBeebies and CBBC) separate from the other channels in iPlayer, so if your little one is on the CBeebies pages, it is now harder to accidentally wander off to other parts of iPlayer.
There are lots of new safety features, including a pop up box alert which will appear if they try to leave the CBeebies area, and we’ve enhanced the parental control locks.
Watch Live
We’ve also enhanced the popular ‘Watch Live’ page by adding a live restart to the player so that you can start from the beginning but also rewind through the last two hours of the schedule.
Explaining the changes to your child
We know that changes can sometimes be difficult for little ones to understand, especially when they are used to seeing something one way or finding their way around websites. We have also found that our audience is very adventurous and willing to explore new things – after all, that’s what they spend their life doing.
If your little one is beginning to find their way around the new CBeebies iPlayer, maybe you could sit down with them and explore it together – keeping it fun for both of you by making a game out it. When we go out testing our games and sites with even the littlest children, I am constantly amazed by how fast they pick things up – often faster than us grown-ups!
We hope you enjoy the new CBeebies iPlayer. To find out more information or leave your thoughts with the iPlayer team, you can also read their blog.
