International policy and legislation

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UK website opens up accessibility discussion

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A new website created by the eAccessibility Forum in the UK will give people the opportunity to provide feedback on their experiences with web accessibility. This will be used to advise government and industry across the UK on how they can design and develop websites that are accessible to people with a disability.

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.

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Disney accessibility lawsuit settled before trial

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A lawsuit made against the Walt Disney Company’s theme parks and websites by three blind women in the USA has been settled out of court, ahead of its scheduled trial date of January 2012.

The three plaintiffs from California and Kansas filed the lawsuit against Disney in September 2010. The suit argued that Disney was in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act (2008) by failing to cater to people with disabilities across its parks and websites.

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Milestone in America’s fight for television captioning

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has overturned a major category of “automatic” exemptions from its television captioning regulations. The decision has been celebrated by the access community as a milestone in the drive to increase captioning across the United States.

Known as “Anglers Order”, this was an exemption application filed in 2005 for The Christian Angler Outdoors Television Show.  The argument put forward by the producers of the show was that they were a not-for-profit organisation, the program was produced for little or no cost and no revenue was derived from it.  On that basis they claimed that having to comply with the broadcast regulations and caption the program meant that it was likely that the program would cease production.  The FCC granted an exemption on this basis and then several hundred similar exemptions were filed in a

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Report from America on a world leading education initiative

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The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) is a US initiative run by the Department of Education and the National Association of the Deaf. Its aim is to provide equal access to communication and education to students who are Deaf, hearing impaired, blind, vision impaired or deaf-blind. Media Access Australia CEO, Alex Varley, recently visited the DCMP headquarters in South Carolina and was impressed with the developments and new focus that it is taking.

Following the announcement of continued government funding, the DCMP offers a range of services promoting inclusion for children with disabilities. Importantly, these services are adapted to meet changing needs.

“A newer area of captioning in the USA is Spanish captions to service the large Hispanic population.  The DCMP is going to devote around 25% of its resources towards Spanish language services,” said Varley.

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UK TV services continue to exceed access requirements

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Ofcom, the UK media and communications regulator, has published data on access services provided on television in the first half of 2011, revealing the vast majority of services have exceeded their legal obligations, particularly for captioning and audio description.

The Television Access Services: Report of the first six months of 2011 revealed that 11 channels provided captions on more than 99% of programming and 35 channels at least doubled the minimum requirement of providing audio description on 10% of programming. All channels with sign language obligations met the minimum requirements.

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