Deaf or hearing impaired

The American Association of the Deaf-Blind, the American Association of People with Disabilities, the Association of Late-Deafened Adults and the Hearing Loss Association of America are among the groups asking

Ofcom surveyed deaf people with different levels of hearing loss to assess the use and value of current text relay and other services and whether or not new technologies provide better means of communication for Deaf and hearing impaired people.

Key findings of the survey were that:

While the Super Bowl, the NFL’s championship game, has been captioned for years, this will be the first time that captioning on commercials has reached 100%. According to a survey conducted by access advocate Sean Zdenek, 75% of commercials during last year’s Super Bowl were captioned. The Super Bowl is usually the most watched television event of the year in America, with a 30-second advertising spot during it costing US$2.7 in 2010.

In 2010 the FCC launched an investigation into the cable TV provider Comcast, following complaints that the company’s set-top boxes were not passing through closed captions. This investigation has now been terminated, with Comcast agreeing to take steps to rectify the problems, and to make a voluntary contribution of US$500,000 to the United States Treasury.

The ABC’s iView remains the only online ‘catch-up’ video service in Australia which carries a significant amount of captioning, with all prime-time programs from ABC1 and ABC2 captioned on iView.

You can view Immigration Nation on the SBS website.

This service, which is expected to launch in the first half of 2011, is a combination of the existing Freeview service with additional catch-up TV accessed via a broadband Internet connection.

Conducted by the Australian Institute, the survey showed that out of the 1294 respondents, 94% said they were aware of captioning, 30% said they sometimes used it and 3% said they always used the service when watching television.

The Association plays a vital role in ensuring Australian DVD and Blu-ray products are released with captions and audio description. AHEDA has worked with consumer groups, Media Access Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission since 2006 to improve access levels, and continues an educational campaign to members to encourage the importation of titles with access features and the local production of titles with access features.

The popular programs Emmerdale and Coronation Street are currently captioned on the service, and ITV has said that it intends to extend captioning to 70% of programs on it. Captions (which are called subtitles in the UK) are activated by pushing the ‘S’ button at the bottom of the screen. Programs on the ITV Player are only available to UK viewers.

The BBC launched captions on its catch-up service, the iPlayer, in 2008, while in Australia the ABC’s iView has had all prime-time programs captioned since March 2010.

Starting with two blockbuster movies in True Grit and The King's Speech, Reading Cinemas Charlestown, in the suburbs of Newcastle NSW, becomes the first Reading location to show closed c