Deaf community against changes to closed captions
Plans to let networks no longer lodge annual compliance reports for closed captions have alarmed the deaf community.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
Well this is a terrible idea.
According to the ABC, the government wants to let free-to-air broadcasters no longer lodge an annual compliance report for closed captions for the deaf community.
Instead it will move to a complaints-based report (something similar to the one working so well for ACMA perhaps?).
Free-to-air broadcasters must currently provide 100 per cent captioning from 6:00am until midnight on their primary channels.
A spokesman for the Department of Communications said the change would provide ‘greater flexibility,’ and a complaints-based approach was more appropriate as part of the Government’s deregulation agenda.
But Former disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes told the ABC, “What they do is make it easier for the industry not to comply with these captions requirements, and people who are deaf are already concerned that sometimes quality of captions is not maintained.
“This will put their captions at further risk.”
In June Brent Phillips Manager of Communication & Community Relations, at Sign Language Communications Victoria told TV Tonight captions were essential for deaf and hearing impaired viewers.
“TV captioning is essential in providing access to information for deaf and hard of hearing viewers. It is not only important for us to view the same TV shows as our peers, including movies, soapies and so forth, but critical in enabling us to be up to date on issues that have an impact on our lives such as news programs, emergency broadcasts,” he said.
“There are legislation and rulings that require TV broadcasters to provide captioning during certain times of the day, however there are still gaps in the provision of captions particularly during daytime, the early hours of the morning and on Pay TV. As such, access to TV shows remains inequitable for deaf and hard of hearing viewers.”
This year the Australian Communications and Media Authority found GTV9 Melbourne and Prime’s NEN in northern New South Wales and NRN in Coff’s Harbour were all guilty of caption-related breaches.
13 Responses
How do they caption live shows such as the news? Recently I’ve had to watch with CC due to another member of the family. I’ve seen a lot of made up words or words that are different to the spoken word.
I am niether deaf or hearing impaired and before David wrote another story on captioning, i wrongly assumed all programmes were captioned.
My hearing’s fine, but like others I find I’m using the subtitles more and more. British programs often have hard to follow accents, the Americans speak way too fast and mumble a lot. It’s not like the old days where the actors actually spoke into nearby microphones, nowadays it’s a bit hit and miss where dialogue is often lost.
Probably because I’m attuned to Australian accents, I find our lot easiest to understand (with the exception of Don Hany who is a world class mumbler).
I’m not hearing impaired but if I live long enough I probably will be. Putting the onus on the deaf to complain after the fact won’t improve the standard of captioning in Australia; it will, however, probably result in more breaches. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if ACMA wasn’t so hopeless … but they are.
@scoba,
Actually, you will find that if a main channel program when repeated as an ‘encore’ on a multi-channel, no matter what time, it has to be captioned.
From the ACMA site:- acma.gov.au/Citizen/Consumer-info/Rights-and-safeguards/Captioning/captioning-obligations-on-freetoair-subscription-television-i-acma
“Broadcasters are required to provide a captioning service for programs transmitted on their SDTV or HDTV multi-channels if the program has previously been broadcast with captions on their main channel”
If it is not, that is a code breach and must be reported.
Pertinax, if there’s no report, the broadcasters will only be reprimanded when complaints are submitted and accepted. It’s reactive, and not about providing a fair service. We should be increasing the requirements on the broadcasters for this, not relaxing them. We have the right to complain when captions are not up to our standards and/or being provided, as per the Disability Discrimination Act (1992) and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Articles 9 and 21). We’re already decades behind UK and USA in regards to provision of captions. USA introduced a closed captioning law last year where all TV providers are to caption all programs otherwise they face a hefty fine for denying access to their TV programs for Deaf and HoH Americans.
David, I quiet frequently use closed captions as I find some people do not speak as clearly as they should and shows like Ncis New Orleans use terms unknown here.
But my question is, why do shows have closed caption on main channel but then not on encore performances the next day/week on a multi channel, if it’s already on they shows track, why not broadcast it? Do they have to pay extra to show closed captions?
So from the story above deaf people can only view primary channels and none of the secondary channels ?
Laurie: deaf and hearing impaired viewers can watch Multichannels. Some may have captions, but it is hit and miss. No requirement yet.
Actually there is no change to closed captions. It is still a requirement of the broadcast licences that they close captions shows.
The only difference is that in stead of compiling data for a report that nobody reads, they will have to deal with complaints. The same as for every other broadcast standard.
At the end of the day compliance will still be assessed by the ACMA. Whether the bureaucratic change makes any difference we shall see.
I personally am not hearing impaired but I use closed captions regularly. Primarily it’s because I don’t want to disturb my family by having my tv too loud, but sometimes I use them when the actors don’t speak clearly (which seems to be more and more common). The government needs to increase it’s regulation, not reduce it, as FTA seems to be falling behind STV (especially the upcoming Discovery Kids which will be 100% closed captioned).
Quality definently needs improvement on most channels, although I notice Seven during live news for example has captioning from the autocue, rather than do it live (until the newsreader goes off script and they do caption live), meaning the captions are real time, as opposed to behind by about 10 seconds when done live.
That is far better and more useful. During prepackaged eps of Big Brother, Nine do live captioning and it’s awkward to follow.
It’s also out of whack that Sky News only do captioning between 4-5pm AEDT, but free to air channels have to caption all news bulletins.
lol @ ‘deregulation’… this federal government is verging on insane.