Seven, Nine in ACMA breaches over Live captioning

Both Seven and Nine networks were recently found in breach of the Broadcasting Services Act over captioning failures.

Both were broadcasting separate live June 2021 Victorian Government press conferences on COVID-19 and wild weather.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority found a string of errors by Seven Melbourne relating to readability, accuracy and comprehensibility, leaving the Program not meaningful to deaf and hearing-impaired viewers.

Seven defended that the examples were relatively minor errors and where the errors were more substantial,
the context of the segment could be relied upon by the viewer to inform meaning.

ACMA took into account, among other factors, the circumstances of the broadcast, including the nature of live captioning and the fact that delays may occur, however a licensee cannot rely on the context of a segment to overcome instances where errors in captioning, or other inaccuracies, cause a captioning service to be less meaningful to deaf and hearing impaired viewers.

Seven (Sydney) was in March issued with formal remedial directions including an independent audit of their captioning processes following a series of breaches found by ACMA.

Seven Melbourne has now given a Enforceable Undertaking to ACMA around an independent audit of its captioning, and staff training.

Nine Melbourne was found in breach over a similarly long list of caption failures around readability, accuracy and comprehensibility.

Nine told ACMA “Not knowing the actual commencement times of the press conferences necessarily leads to very short windows in which to action the relevant technical requirements to facilitate the readiness of live
captioning services for breaking news events” and added, “press conferences by the New South Wales Government were able to be foreseen as they all commenced at 11am each day. Accordingly, this allowed for the relevant technical preparations to be attended to.”

It also pointed to working from home difficulties, internet speed, connectivity and not having access to the same systems and equipment available in the workplace.

ACMA ruled that by June 2021 the COVID-19 pandemic had been in existence for more than a year and the Victorian Government had scheduled many such press conferences, often at short notice.