Seven News falters on closed captions

Seven has breached the Broadcasting Services Act for failing to provide accurate closed captions to two Seven News broadcasts in 2020.

Sydney bulletins on November 2 and November 28 were ruled in breach by the Australian Communications and Media Authority following complaints about captions being missing, delayed or inaccurate.

ACMA, which indicated both broadcasts were live-captioned, investigated and found some segments did not meet the requirements for readability, accuracy and comprehensibility.

Seven acknowledged some segments suffered quality issues but disputed others when measured as part of the News segment as a whole.

It noted in “the nature of live captioning in a fast-paced news environment and the acknowledgment … delays may occur.”

It further noted, “an unforeseen technical issue occurred with a live captioner who was working from home as a result of COVID-19 protocols of our caption provider. This unforeseen technical issue was caused due to an internet outage affecting the live captioner, which led to a series intermittent losses and delays, starting at 18:49.”

But ACMA considered that an internet outage could have reasonably been foreseen by the licensee with arrangements in place, such as a back-up captioner, to minimise its impact on deaf and hearing-impaired viewers. It found 4 separate breaches of the Broadcasting Services Act, despite 33 segments meeting requirements.

“Seven appreciates the importance of the captioning service that we provide to deaf and hearing-impaired viewers and takes its captioning obligations very seriously,” Seven told ACMA.

Earlier this year closed caption supplier Ai-Media admitted it was responsible for a staffer leaking the video of Seven News presenters Rebecca Maddern and Mike Amor discussing Novak Djokovic’s decision not to become vaccinated.