Canada is the first country to make the captioning of commercials and promos compulsory, and is thus the first country to achieve what is in effect 100% captioning on TV broadcasts. While the voluntary captioning of commercials is common in Australia and many other countries, captioning of promos is very rare.
Once the rules, which were announced in March 2013, take effect, all advertising content will be screened by the Television Bureau of Canada to ensure it has closed captions before being cleared for broadcast. The onus will be on the advertisers to caption their commercials.
For more information on the CRTC’s captioning rules, see the Canada section of our ‘International access regulations’ pages.
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