46 per cent of the people who took part in the online survey complained about captioning (called subtitling in the UK) on news programs, with the most commonly identified problems being a delay between speech and the caption appearing on screen, and poor accuracy of captions. These are problems commonly associated with live captioning. Other complaints were about captions on entertainment programs (18 per cent), Drama (16 per cent) and Sports (12 per cent).
Action on Hearing Loss (formerly the Royal National Institute for Deaf People) conducted the survey between July and September 2012. It came after the UK communications regulator Ofcom agreed to look into the issue of caption quality. Action on Hearing Loss has called on broadcasters to invest in live captioning technology to ensure the best results, and to ensure that live captioning is only used for truly live programs.
The survey results are consistent with complaints from viewers received by Media Access Australia, the majority of which concern live captions. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) was last year given new powers to investigate complaints about captions, and will soon be releasing a set of caption quality guidelines it has developed.
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