“On competition days, Nine will deliver 14.5 hours of continuous live coverage with closed captions from 6.30pm until 9.00am the following morning on London Live,” said a Nine spokesperson. “Then from 9.00am to 11.00am each morning, you can see all the day’s highlights in London Gold, which will be replayed from 4.00pm-6.00pm every afternoon. London Gold will also be captioned.”
While Deaf and hearing impaired sports fans will be well catered for with Nine’s captioned coverage, the situation will be different for FOXTEL subscribers. FOXTEL is promoting its Olympics coverageas the most extensive in history, with eight dedicated channels broadcasting every gold event live, in standard definition and high definition. However, a spokesperson from FOXTEL has told Media Access Australia that, due to a combination of logistical and cost issues, none of these channels will be captioned.
With the recent amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act, FOXTEL is obliged to caption 10% of programs on five of its sports channel in the financial year 2012-13, but it does not have to caption its Olympics channels.
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