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Caption standards improve for deaf and hearing impaired viewers

New rules require TV captions to be readable, accurate and comprehensible for deaf and hearing impaired Australians

2012-12-06_0013Media watchdog the Australian Communications and Media Authority has announced a new Television Captioning Quality Standard to improved viewing standards for deaf and hearing impaired Australians.

Revised rules requiring captions to be readable, accurate and comprehensible follow breaches by the ABC this week on At the Movies and Gruen Planet.

“The Australian Communications and Media Authority recognises the fundamental value of captioning in ensuring television services are accessible to all Australians,” said ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman.

“Given the important role that captioning has in contributing to social equity, we have consulted with both caption users and industry to develop a standard that will provide television viewers with meaningful captions.”

From July 1st the key changes for primary channels include:

  • new captioning targets for commercial and national television broadcasters
  • new captioning obligations and targets for subscription television
  • the requirement for a captioning quality standard
  • the requirement for broadcasters to transmit emergency warnings in the form of text and speech, and caption those warnings where practicable

The annual captioning targets for 2012–13 for free-to–air (FTA) commercial and national broadcasters require them to caption 90 per cent of programs transmitted between 6 am and midnight, increasing to 95 per cent in 2013–14 and reaching 100 per cent from 1 July 2014.

In addition to the captioning targets, there is a basic rule that FTA broadcasters must comply with. From 28 June 2012, a captioning service must be provided for all programs transmitted between 6 pm and 10.30 pm (the designated viewing hours) and all news and current affairs programs outside these designated hours.

From 1 July 2014, the designated viewing hours will be extended to between 6 am and 12 am, consistent with the viewing hours that correspond with the obligations relating to captioning targets. The requirement that all news and current affairs programs must be captioned, regardless of the time they are transmitted, will remain.

For subscription television broadcasters and narrowcasters, the targets range from 10 per cent to 60 per cent for 2012–13, increasing to between 15 per cent and 75 per cent from 1 July 2014 (with the exception of subscription television music services, for which the annual captioning target remains at five per cent). The specific target depends on the type of service provided—music services have the lowest captioning targets and movie services have the highest.

Broadcasters are required to provide a captioning service for programs transmitted on their SDTV or HDTV multi-channels in the licence (coverage) area if the broadcasters have previously transmitted the television programs with captions on their core television service in the licence (coverage) area.

The ACMA has also released a series of informational videos, with both captioning and Auslan (sign language) translation, to help ensure that caption users are aware of the captioning rules. The videos also explain how to report or complain about any associated television broadcast captioning issues.

10 Responses

  1. Wow, just out of curiosity i turned the captions on, i must say watching the news is painful, the captions are way behind what is being said.

  2. Unfortunately the captioning is not like that shown in the photo, but is white on large black blocks which, many times, obscure an important part of the picture.
    As Jennome mentions below, I find it harder and harder to understand American female screechy, nails-on-a-blackboard voices, in particular. Generally, the ability to speak clearly is definitely diminishing.

  3. It’s not just the hearing impaired who use captions – I have very good hearing but find that in the rush to be ‘authentic’, the ability to hear dialogue and understand it is getting harder and harder. There’s far too much mumbling, the Americans talk at a million miles an hour (no one can enunciate), the Brits have lots of hard-to-understand regional accents, and the “ocker” Aussies are no better.

    You don’t have to speak with an Oxford accent, just speak clearly. An “Age” reviewer urged us to try The Mindy Project late Thursday nights. So I did – couldn’t understand a word she said. Squeaky little voice and spoke with machine gun rapidity. The captioning couldn’t keep up with her! A complete waste of time.

    I hear a lot of people complaining about this, but no journalist has seen fit to actually take the matter up.

  4. @ Kristi – I use captions as I like to watch TV after the family goes to bed, and have found the same thing, but I believe it is a universal thing for all captioned programs as the hearing impaired don’t want to read someone stutter or repeat themselves (which I could really tell from watching The Kings Speech the other week which had all the stuttering not noted in the subtitles). If someone is hearing impaired reading this comment I mean no offense and if you have input I would love to know it.

  5. Over the past 12 months I’ve started using captioning as my hearing has gotten worse. What surprises me is the captioning so often covers the action taking place on the screen and also sometimes the captioning doesn’t match what is being said. It might ‘mean’ the same thing but is not exactly what is being spoken – some words may be left out and sometimes whole sentences. And yes, there are a lot of shows that aren’t captioned at all.

  6. @Josh777 – totally agree. There’s also a lot of content on pay TV that lacks captioning.

    @poss – no, the captioning is layered over the top of all the random crap that the networks now pollute our screens with.

    In some cases (like news coverage or during opening/closing credits), the captions move to the top of the screen so that information popping up along the bottom is visible.

  7. I was shocked the other night to hear on the news that deaf or the hearing impaired, can’t do jury service because they have no room in court for the person who signs???……its 2013??

  8. While there is no legal obligation to have captions on digital sister channels it is a slap in the face the hearing impaired as it means that only 1/5 of the FTA channels offer captioning which reduces what they are able to watch (none or the reality series on 7MATE (e.g. American Restorations, American Pickers), drama series on GEM (e.g. Rizzoli & Isles and Dallas) and ONE (e.g. Blue Bloods and Burn Notice) and the many first-run movies shown across the channels)

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