The committee’s report was one of the requirements of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which was signed into law by President Obama last October. Now that the FCC has the report, it has six months to set new closed captioning rules.
The annual conference will feature a range of experts, including Media Access Australia CEO Alex Varley. The panel discussion will look at the upcoming audio description trial proposed for the ABC in the second half of 2011, as well as the trial that is now running in New Zealand. Entitled ‘Access to Digital TV, Audio Description and beyond’, the discussion will be on Sunday 22 May at the Bayview on the Park hotel in Melbourne.
The BBC Technology article on gaming for those who are colourblind talks about the difficulties people who are colourblind have when playing mainstream games. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is a prime example of colour being used solely to convey information. In multiplayer mode, teammates are identified by green tags above their heads while enemies have red tags, making it particularly difficult, if not impossible, for people who are colourblind to easily recognise friend from foe.
Among the accessible cinema venues are the cinemas that have adopted the latest in captioning technology – the CaptiView system. This easy-to-use hand-held screen means more sessions are available to those who may benefit from captions.
