TV access

Receiver-mixed and broadcast-mixed audio description

Audio description is delivered as a second audio stream to your television or set-top box, and can be either 'receiver mixed' or 'broadcast mixed'.

With receiver-mixed audio description, the normal audio stream for the program is broadcast, while the second audio stream consists of the audio description narration only, along with signals that lower the sound level on the primary audio stream so that the descriptions can be heard.

With broadcast-mixed audio description, the second audio stream contains both the original soundtrack and the descriptions mixed into it.

Taxonomy:

Television

Blind or vision impaired

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American groups call for universal television captioning

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US Deaf and hearing impaired and disability advocacy groups have filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for television to be fully captioned.

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

Taxonomy:

Television

Deaf or hearing impaired

TV access

FCC, Federal Communications Commission

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ITV Player in the UK now has captions

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The British commercial television network ITV yesterday announced that captions are available on its online catch-up service, the ITV Player.

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.

Taxonomy:

Catchup services

Television

Closed captions

Deaf or hearing impaired

Web

News

TV access

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Nine agrees to caption ‘V’ on GO!

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Nine has agreed to caption the new series of ‘V’ on free-to-air channel GO! after viewers complained that it was not captioned.

While the previous series shown on Nine’s main channel was captioned, the first episode of the new series was not. This is in line with the Federal Government’s regulations concerning multichannels like GO!, which are only obliged to caption repeat programs that were originally screened on a network’s main channel with captions.

However, following the complaints, Nine has agreed to caption the new series from episode 2 onwards.

Taxonomy:

Captions

Television

Closed captions

Deaf or hearing impaired

Multichannels

News

TV access

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