The petition highlights the lack of accessibility of broadcast media for Deaf or hearing impaired viewers. At present, there is no legislation in New Zealand requiring broadcasters and video-on-demand providers to provide captioning, compared to Australia where TV stations are required to broadcast with captioning on all primary channels between the hours of 6am and midnight seven days a week.
In New Zealand, no news is captioned between 11pm and 12pm the next day. Many of the main channels cannot support any live captioning and no New Zealand On Demand or TV catch-up service offers captioning.
Enclosed in the petition is a video created by Caption It NZ. It is a YouTube video showing the challenges of lip-reading using the Rugby World Cup as an example.
This petition aims to increase awareness of the need to improve inclusion and equality for Deaf and hearing-impaired New Zealanders. You can sign the petition to legislate closed captioning here.
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