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Better captioning coming for hearing impaired viewers

Readability, comprehensibility and accuracy of captioning are set to improve on Free to Air and Pay TV.

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This week the federal government passed legislation to boost free-to-air and subscription television for people with a hearing impairment.

The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Improved Access to Television Services) Bill 2012, will include measures to improve the readability, comprehensibility and accuracy of captioning and ensure better access to televised emergency warnings for the hearing impaired.

“Access to television is important to all members of our community, including those with a hearing impairment. These changes will help the more than five million Australians who are expected to be affected by hearing loss by 2020,” the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy said.

“Captioning helps people with a hearing impairment by providing the text version of speech and other sounds during television broadcasts.”

The Bill implements a number of recommendations from the Australian Government’s Media Access Review, tabled on 3 December 2010, and is the result of close consultation with the Disability Commissioner and the Australian Human Rights Commission.

New captioning requirements take effect from 1 July 2012.

6 Responses

  2. @db – Dip into the $200million++ that the government handed the networks recently.
    Curious why ABC24 stops captioning at 11pm AEST, which is 9pm in WA.
    Captioning of the new digital channels should be mandatory. If they want more viewers, like me, then captioning is needed.
    But, whoever captions “Question Time”, there is no “Member for Blah Blah” and no “Mister Rabbit”.

  3. I have good hearing, but find I have to use the captions more and more as actors gabble their way through their scripts. The Americans are particularly bad and a lot of regional British accents are hard to follow too. New Girl is the worst, she’s a shocker. I think a lot of it has to do with the way TV (and movies) are filmed these days, the hand-held camera syndrome, and bugger the sound.

  4. This is good news, I have hearing problems and I used captioning almost all the time. But I would love more digital channels to have captioning enabled-namely Eleven and Gem.

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