The Netflix series "Daredevil" will have the option of audio narration beginning Tuesday, the company said. (Tweet this)
It's a victory for advocacy groups that have been lobbying on behalf of visually-impaired fans. "Marvel's Daredevil" is a TV–series based on comic crime-fighter Matt Murdock, who was blinded as a child.
The much-buzzed series quickly caught the attention of weekend binge-watchers, garnering a 9.3 rating on IMDB and a 4-star rating on MetaCritic since Netflix released the first 13-episode season on April 10. But the show also earned itself a change.org petition to make the show accessible, with comments like, "Everyone benefits from accessibility...Netflix, it's good business practice."
Read More Fans to Netflix: Make Daredevil accessible to the blind
Other Netflix original series "House of Cards," "Orange is the New Black" and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" will also get audio narration in the next few weeks, said the company, with possible expansion to all major original series and select other content in the future. Robert Kingett, a blind journalist and founder of the Accessible Netflix Project, told CNBC he hoped Netflix would roll out more audio described content.
"I have just listened to a sample of the audio, and I am thrilled to see that it is professionally done," Kingett said. "The describer is a somber spoken man that fits seamlessly with the darker tone of the show. The writing style is very well done. It does exactly what audio description is supposed to do in a systematic example of descriptive adjectives."
Larry Paradis, Executive Director of Disability Rights Advocates, has been helping clients work with Netflix toward goals like contractually obliging movie studios to provide descriptive narration tracks when they are already available, and making it easier for blind customers to identify which DVDs in the Netflix library are described.
"Disability Rights Advocates is very pleased that Netflix has finally begun to provide some audio description for its original content," Paradis told CNBC. "We have been in discussions with Netflix, on behalf of clients who are blind and have visual impairments, about providing audio description for all of the Netflix original content as well as content from major studios, and we are hopeful that audio description will soon become the norm for access to video content."
A Netflix spokesperson did not "have anything to add at this point" related to the cost or implementation of the new service. Netflix reports earnings Wednesday afternoon.
—CNBC's Tom DiChristopher contributed to this report