Media Access Australia releases report on Accessible Regions Campaign

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Wednesday, 22 December 2010 14:12pm

Media Access Australia today released the findings of its Accessible Regions Campaign. The campaign has found that the quality of captioning on regional news and current affairs programs is severely lacking.

The Accessible Regions Campaign

Between October and December 2010, Media Access Australia conducted an Accessible Regions Campaign, which focused on ensuring that regional news and current affairs programs are broadcast with quality captions.

In the past, regional broadcasters have had a much poorer record on meeting captioning requirements than their metropolitan counterparts. Metropolitan broadcasters are subject to a far higher degree of scrutiny than regional broadcasters, which naturally means that there is less pressure on them to meet their targets.

The Caption Quality Survey

The Accessible Regions Campaign was centred around a Caption Quality Survey, which asked individuals in regional areas to assess the quality of captions on regional news and current affairs programs. The Caption Quality Survey asked participants a range of questions about the quality of captions on news and current affairs programs, including the equipment they use to receive captions, their preferred news and current affairs programs, and major issues  they had with captions on these programs.

Major findings

The 15participants came from regional Victoria and New South Wales. The most commonly used pieces of equipment used to receive captions were digital set-top boxes and digital televisions. Most participants (73.3 %) said they were unable to record captions at home.

In regional Victoria, participants were most likely to have come from the Eastern Victoria broadcasting region (50 %). In regional New South Wales, participants mostly came from the Northern New South Wales broadcasting region (80 %).

All participants (from both states) stated that captions are not or are poorly synchronised with the audio track on regional news and current affairs programs. Most participants (73.3 %) said that there were often news and current affairs programs which were either totally or partially uncaptioned, and misspellings and errors were commonly reported (66.7 %).

Some participants gave an overall assessment of the quality of captions in their area. The average rating was.

Conclusions

Although the number of participants was low, it is clear that there are severe problems with the quality of captions in regional Victoria and New South Wales on news and current affairs programs. The most pressing issues for regional broadcasters are to ensure that all of their news and current affairs broadcasts are captioned, and that captions are as far as possible delivered synchronously with the audio track.


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