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ABC reports back on audio description trial
Transcript
10 November 2013.
Roberta: The audio description trial on the ABC was finished nearly a year ago. The trial was widely applauded and supported by blind and vision impaired people across Australia. They want to see that service continue. One of the key elements of the trial was a report by the ABC on how it all went. This report has just been released and to discuss its findings and the implications for a future audio description service I’m joined by Alex Varley, CEO of Media Access Australia. Welcome, Alex.
Alex: Thank you, Roberta.
Roberta: Now, why did the report take so long to be released?
Alex: Well, we’re not really sure. It’s a bit of a mystery because, as you said, the trial finished nearly a year ago and there was a couple of controversial things in there but really the point of the report was so that everyone could see what happened, what went wrong, what worked and how we could go forward. So I think a combination of the change of government at a federal level and also some action by Blind Citizens Australia to progress this issue has helped the report to be published.
Roberta: Okay, now we have the report, what are the key findings?
Alex: The report, of course, focuses on them delivering a service, communicating any problems that they had and the main one I think that sits in there is that they stress very strongly that the systems that they used to deliver the service were not the systems that they would eventually use. So what I mean by that is that normally in television you try and automate as many things as possible because the ABC has many channels across many regions. What they actually did was they went from a manual system where they were literally uploading video tapes of programs and that’s because they were only doing it for a short time. There were also some issues around degradation of services, so the ABC2 service and some of the radio services lost a bit of quality because of the extra use of the bandwidth. Also the final thing was about some issues around people receiving audio description when they didn’t necessarily want it. So that was quite interesting.
Roberta: You mentioned problems with receivers. Can you explain that a bit more?
Alex: Yes, sure. So with a lot of televisions and set top boxes these days, they are actually capable of playing out the audio description. Now, because there’s not a permanent service in Australia, sometimes the televisions and set top boxes that are bought actually have it set to on. So what we found in the trial was that a large number of people in their thousands suddenly started hearing these voices on their television and of course it was the audio description service. Now, in most cases, just simply being talked through and explaining its menu item, that this is how you turn it off, fixed the problem but they did actually find in a small number of receivers that people couldn’t actually turn off the audio description at all and these were obviously people that didn’t want it. So that’s one of the big issues that needs to be looked at and addressed.
Roberta: Now, ongoing service and trial, Alex, what’s the difference between delivering these services for the ABC?
Alex: Well, of course, the first thing with an ongoing service is there’s an expectation that it will be a service that’s properly delivered. So that means it works everywhere, that all the issues are sorted out and people know that they are going to get a continuing service and what kind of programs are on there. So the point of a trial is to try and sort through some basic issues and see if there are any major roadblocks. They’ve done that and they have identified what some potential problems will be. Now the challenge is to actually look at, okay, how do we integrate this into the whole way that the ABC operates so that we’ve got that service happening absolutely everywhere, across time zones, different types of programs and the audio description coming on programs that are imported or stuff that’s done locally, so a much more complex sort of process.
Roberta: Do you think the ABC got good feedback from its viewers?
Alex: I think it got limited feedback. So the main feedback that it got from blind and vision impaired people was to say, “Great service, love it. Please do more.” Then they obviously got some of that feedback from people who had problems with their receivers. I think what the ABC needs to explore much more, in terms of an ongoing service, is communication methods for people knowing about which programs are going to be audio described, how you find that on guides and other forms of communication. So that really needs to be ramped up for it to work properly.
Roberta: What are the next steps then that need to be taken?
Alex: Well, I think the next steps really are about all these people who are important to this, starting off with blind and vision impaired viewers, the ABC, the access suppliers and the government sitting down and actually talking through a process for getting a service going. I think inherent in that is the clear acceptance that even in rolling out a permanent service there’s going to be some problems and issues and the best way to actually deal with those is just to get on with it and work through them as you go along and make sure you have the right people there to be able to talk to about that, to speed up that whole sorting out process.
Roberta: Well, you’ve got a bit of work ahead of you.
Alex: We all do, yes, but it’s worth it because look what’s at the end of the trouble.
Roberta: Exactly. Well, thank you for that, Alex. We’ve been speaking with Alex Varley from Media Access Australia. You can keep up to date about the effort to get audio description back on the air on the Media Access Australia website, www.mediaaccess.org.au, or by calling 02 9212 6242. Media Access Australia are supporters of this program and we support Media Support Access Australia.