Policy & Legislation

The amendments, which were passed by the Senate in June, introduce quotas for subscription TV providers such as FOXTEL. These will increase incrementally and will range from 5% on music channels to 75% for movie channels by 1 July 2014.

Captioning quotas for free-to-air television will also increase incrementally to one hundred per cent of programming between 6 am and midnight by 2014. News and current affairs programs must be captioned no matter what time of day they are broadcast.

The campaign, It’s As Easy As ABC, will coordinate thousands of Australians to send postcards to Mark Scott and Stephen Conroy, requesting the service be made permanent beyond the AD trial’s scheduled end date of 4 November.

The report, Television Access Services: Report for the first six months of 2012, has shown that many channels are significantly exceeding both the captioning (called subtitling in the UK) and audio description (AD) quotas, including on free-to-air channels, such as ITV and BBC, movies and sports channels.

Confirmation of the deadline provided by the FCC had been postponed due to members of the Digital Media Association, which include media providers such as Apple, Amazon and Google, arguing that more time was needed to implement the requirements. However, the FCC pushed back and confirmed that TV networks and video sites must provide closed captions on their content –offline or online – by 30 September.

Audio description is offered on almost half of DVDs released in Australia and in some cinemas and theatres. Many countries, including the UK, New Zealand and Canada, broadcast several hours of audio described television each week. The trial is Australia’s first step towards catching up.

Lauren Henley, of Blind Citizens Australia, gathered with friends to share the historic moment and watch the David Attenborough documentary Nature’s Great Events.

The trial commencement date was announced in a joint media release issued by Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE), and Senator Jan McLucas, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers.

“This audio description trial is an Australian first,” said Senator Conroy. “It is being funded by the Gillard Government and will cover drama, documentaries and other content broadcast on ABC1.”

ACCAN’s submission to the Inquiry into IT Pricing, which is being conducted by the House Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications, investigated how much Australians pay for software and hardware compared to the rest of the world. In particular, assistive technology costs more here than elsewhere in the world, yet Australians with disability are more likely to be under financial pressure.

Ofcom’s ‘Proposals for access services on non-domestic channels’ are in response to the European Union’s ‘Audio Media Service Directive’. This states that “Each Member State shall ensure all audiovisual media services transmitted by media service under its jurisdiction comply with the rules of the system of law applicable to audiovisual media services intended for the public in that Member State”.