Comment sought on TV caption standards
ACMA is calling for comments on a draft captioning standard for people who are deaf or hearing impaired.
- Published by David Knox
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The media regulator is calling for comments on a draft captioning standard for people who are deaf or hearing impaired.
The draft Standard by the Australian Communications and Media Authority sets minimum quality requirements for television captioning services.
“As the ACMA’s goal in developing the draft standard is providing meaningful access, the focus is on the need for programs to be comprehensible to viewers using the captions. It is also seeking to balance the need for certainty and clarity, with the need for flexibility in certain circumstances,” said ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman.
“Deaf and hearing impaired viewers also have the right to access quality captions that provide a visual translation of the soundtrack of a television program.”
ACMA is responsible for developing the captioning quality standard and investigating complaints about captioning quality. It will also monitor compliance with captioning requirements through annual reporting.
For more info visit ACMA website.
Submissions close Tuesday 22 January 2013.
10 Responses
There’s a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation in the community about captions and how they’re produced, particularly live captions. If anyone’s interested in finding out some more information, please send us an email at info @redbeemedia.com.au.
@ David Knox Fingers crossed with this one?
Good old ACMA, rightly or wrongly off on another tangent once more, whilst this tangent may well be off the same circle surrounding those of us, with varying degrees of hearing imparement, and in my case since early childhood and now being compounded with aging.
For obvious reasons, CC is of most benefit to those with extreem to full hearing loss, and I dread the day that my total silence kicks in, as I have long since given up on CC. simply because it is not always available, and when it is, it can be a mish mash of quality(pot luck= size, speed and background convergance etc) and if others are watching with me, rewinding is not an option or at least very annoying for even the tollerant of visiting friends or family members, not forgetting that eyesight also becomes an aging problem for some.
So I ask ACMA, what about the other hearing circle tangent, that been around much longer than CC’s and obiviously well and truely at the bottom of ACMA’s “Ignore Them and Hopefully They will Go Away Whingers Basket” or their “Just Feed Them B/S, or even tell them their complaints are imaginary basket”.
I am of course talking about varing volumes between network transmissions and our so called imaginary claims of High Advertisement Volumes ( or the old anologue practice of compaction, improving the Add’s quality, but what is their excuse now its all digital technology)
Of Course ACMA still deny that the networks increase the volumes of Adds, but never say that that they do not regulate volumes of supplied adds in each add break, nor do they deny that networks might be cunningly “Lowering the volume of the programmes” leaving the adds set at the highest volume allowed? and leaving the volume adjustments to the viewers.
All I ask of ACMA, is to live for a while in the world, that many us of have chosen to enjoy listening to our entertainment( without running the risk of further hearing damage, as is the case now), and that is by wearing reasonably priced Head Phones and ACMA swearing not to adjust their confortable volume zone, once set, and experience what we do, and what they have allowed to happen.
Please keep comments succinct.
Jason D: “The quality of captioning is quite poor. Words are missing and sentences are skipped”
Even on pre-recorded shows, captions can’t always be a word-for-word transcription. Due to the time it takes to read captions as well as watch what’s actually going on, data rate constraints (mostly inherited from the old teletext system for captions), the % of the screen available for captions, etc, they often have to paraphrase or drop sentences that don’t affect overall understanding.
“Also, the block lettered captions can also take up a lot of the screen.”
Unlike captions in the UK or on DVDs (which send / embed captions as graphics), Australian TV captions are are sent as plain text. Your TV or STB is responsible for the quality & clarity of the lettering used.
I don’t understand why the captioning during the News is so bad. Can’t it just be fed from the autocue system?
The Fed. Parliament captioning often reads “The Member for Blah Blah”.
Captions can be 7-8 secs. ahead or behind pics.
Reminds me of The Panel many years ago where the captioner was clearly not keeping up with the conversation and was just typing ‘blah blah blah’ to try and catch up! A viewer must have pointed it out to them so they replayed the segment the next week with the captions on display and sure enough there was ‘blah blah blah’ along the screen!
when it comes to live programming the quality of the captions is terrible. the person typing the captions probably doesn’t have enough to double check things. I think a time delay on live programs would be a good idea.
Captioning seems to be of issue on live broadcasts. I presume that the people doing the captioning during the news etc, can’t type fast enough to keep up with what is being said.
I’m not deaf, yet I still use captions. Especially for programming which may use words or terms I’m not usually familiar with. The quality of captioning is quite poor. Words are missing and sentences are skipped. Live captioning is also terrible, the amount of captioning errors are ridiculous. Also, the block lettered captions can also take up a lot of the screen.
Perhaps they could start by insisting words are spelt correctly, Last night enjoyed the last 4 eps of ABC’s Strike Back – however, when someone spoke to the lieutenant, CC’s spelt the word as “left-tenant”…