Speaking on the video, Get the Picture – making television easier for people with a sight loss (below), audio description user James Risdon says that the service “is absolutely fantastic for someone like myself who hasn’t got enough sight to see what’s happening on screen”.
According to the new mandate, the video providers must provide an audible version of the emergency information, whether it is crawling text or graphics, so that it is accessible to the blind or vision impaired. Emergency information must also be prioritised over foreign language translation and video description. This is in line with changes brought by the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act 2010 (CVAA). The new rules are to be applied within two years.
The Television Access Services: Final report on 2012 also shows that audio description levels are high. While their mandatory quotas are 10%, a number of channels, including ITV1 (in England and Wales), Channel 4, Sky (for its non-sport channels) and the BBC have committed to audio describing 20% of their programs.
Senator Tom Harkin, who was responsible for introducing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1989, has introduced the Captioning and Image Narration to Enhance Movie Accessibility (CINEMA) Act to amend Title III of the current ADA. The CINEMA Act will require cinema complexes with two or more screens to offer captioning and audio description for all movies at all sessions.
