Policy & Legislation

What is the state of audio description in the world?

There are many countries that now have regulations in place for audio description, including Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK, Sweden, Germany, Canada, France, Ireland, Portugal and the USA. However, most of these are for public channels only and Portugal has not implemented its requirements. Only five of the countries listed have some audio description (AD) on commercial channels. Poland and Spain have a handful of programs, whereas the UK, Canada and USA have a form of across-the-board service.

Ofcom notes that the quality of pre-prepared captions (which are called ‘subtitles’ in the UK) is generally very good, and the majority of complaints it receives are related to live captioning. As caption quotas have risen, so have the number of programs being captioned live. Most of this captioning is now undertaken using speech recognition technology, but this is imperfect and errors are common. 

Following consultation with viewers and representative groups, Ofcom has concluded that the four key dimensions that affect the quality of live captions are:

In the presentation, Hollier and Wood discuss how the course, the only one of its kind, enables the Australian government to comply with international web accessibility guidelines.

Their paper highlights the challenges faced by the Australian Government as it progresses towards WCAG 2.0 conformance, and how the course equips government web professionals to meet them.

Along with funding for DisabilityCare and education reform, funding to the ABC was boosted by $109.4 million. This money is allocated to news and current affairs and digital delivery of programming. What is noticeably absent is funding for an audio description service. Audio description is essential for providing equal access to television for people who are blind and vision impaired.

Mika Pyyhkala and Lindsay Yazzolino claim they could not get past the H&R Block log-in page when they attempted to file their tax returns in 2012. The complaint alleges H&R Block's website excludes blind taxpayers from accessing the same online service available to other taxpayers.

Article 114 of the Massachusetts Constitution states:

Scott has had a long career in access. He was formerly CEO of the Australian Caption Centre (the not-for-profit organisation from which Media Access Australia grew), and has a long-standing commitment to captions being of the highest possible quality.

GI: I’m one of a group of champions in a whole range of areas as to how the NBN is relevant to Australian society. I wasn’t in the original group and I kept going back to the minister, Stephen Conroy, and saying “Look, disability is the untold story of the NBN. I think you should have someone telling these stories.” He came back to me and said, “That’s great, will you do it?”

Speaking on the video, Get the Picture – making television easier for people with a sight loss (below), audio description user James Risdon says that the service “is absolutely fantastic for someone like myself who hasn’t got enough sight to see what’s happening on screen”.