The act instructed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to come up with new regulations governing these requirements by 12 January 2012, including a date from which the new requirements become effective.
A press release from the NFD notes that “New Zealand TV captioning is among the worst in the western world with even Uganda having a better service than us. While some captioning is funded by NZ On Air and a high quality captioning service is provided by TV1, TV2 and TV3 it amounts to less than 10% of total TV hours each week across all free to air and subscriber pay channels.”
In 2007, the CRTC mandated 100% captioning of programs other than commercials and promos. It also instructed the Canadian Association of Broadcasters to establish caption working groups for the English-language and French-language markets. The new standards adopt the recommendations of the French-language Closed Captioning Group. The CRTC released these recommendations in August, and requested comments from interested parties.
The new standards include the following:
The eAccessibility Forum is a coalition made up of government, industry and voluntary bodies, working to ensure people who are disabled in the UK have equal access to information and technology. Launched by the UK Minister for Communications, Ed Vaizey, the website is part of the eAccessibility Forum’s web accessibility initiative and will inform the eAccessibility Action Plan.
