Transcript: Audio description on TV - a look at Britain and the US

Roberta:  With us today is Chris Mikul, project manager of Media Access Australia. Chris is going to tell us about the state of audio of description on television in Britain and the United States. Welcome Chris.

Chris:  Hello Roberta.

Roberta:  Now, what’s the situation with audio description? Let’s look at Britain first Chris.

Chris:  Well, it’s very healthy in Britain. It’s probably the healthiest that it is in any country in the world I’d venture to say. Essentially the set up there is, they’ve had legislation in place in the 90’s which says that if your TV station that’s been broadcasting on digital for ten years, basically by that time you have to get up to ten percent of audio description or ten percent of the programs audio described.

There was a bit of lobbying last year by the Royal National Institute of Blind People and various others to get that raised to twenty percent and the government decided to knock that back, but part of their reasoning was that some of the channels, well a lot of the channels were doing more than ten percent anyway, and what’s happened since then  is some of the main channels, or I suppose all of the main channels which is basically BBC, ITC, Channel 4 and Sky which is their pay TV service, have all voluntarily gone up to twenty percent and even better than that some of them are doing even more.

So, I’ve got a list here from the RNIB that, it’s actually going back to 2009, and some of them I can see are, for example Sky movies drama channel was up to forty-seven percent and the comedy channel is up to thirty-seven percent, so I think it’s way more than anywhere else in the world so it’s really going well.

Roberta:  That’s fabulous. Chris, would you have any idea how long it took Britain to get to where they are now?

Chris:  Well, the legislation went through in I think it was ’96 or something like that and so it took up to like 2006 for the main channels to get up to the ten percent minimum, so it took, yeah it took about ten years but in terms of say, compared to captioning I suppose audio description is sort of about, I don’t know about fifteen to twenty years behind captioning. So, there’s still a bit of catching up to do. 

Roberta:  But it’s great that it’s this far. Now, what about the United States?

Chris:  Uh, it’s a little bit more mixed, but again that’s positive. Essentially audio description was in sort of limbo there for quite a long time. At one point they had some legislation in that said that some programs had to be audio scribed, but that got knocked down I think in ’92, so there’s been lobbying to get that back again since then.

The thing that’s helped everything along is President Obama signed an Act called the Twenty First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act last October and that reinstated the audio description quotas, which are essentially, I mean they’re not huge, especially compared to Britain, it’s only four hours a week for the main channels but it’s better than nothing I suppose.

So that’s due to come in mid next year and there is a little bit of a delay though in that this Act that President Obama signed also said that TV delivered by mobile phones and devices like that, they had to have audio description and there’s been a bit of begging from the people involved saying mobile phones are not ready for that yet. So, that’s been put off until 2013, but again it’s coming and it’s legislated, so that’s good as well.

Roberta:  Well it is good, a little bit slow in coming, but still. And, the big question Chris, when’s it coming in Australia?

Chris:  (laughter) This is the one I’ve been answering for quite a while now. Now, I have actually heard a few positive things lately, so maybe in last month I would have been, I don’t know, seventy percent positive that was going to come in, and I'm now considerably more positive that in the very short future there’s going to be a trail announced which will be on ABC 1. So, we’re just all waiting now for that, but I think it’s going to be good news. Hopefully.

Roberta:  Well, you’ve worked very hard towards this I know that. If you want to know more about audio description, Media Access Australia have a website and that is mediaaccess.org.au and you can contact them at info@mediaaccess.org.au or you can phone, this is what I like to do; 0292126242. Thank you for all of the Chris and I’ll be talking to you very soon. And Chris Michael is the Project Manager of Media Access Australia and Media Access Australia are supporters of this program.