The program, which can be viewed on ABC's iView service with captions, noted that many of the problems stem from an increased use of ‘voice captioning’ (where a captioner re-speaks dialogue as a program goes to air and speech recognition software converts it into captions). Previously, live programs and live segments of news bulletins could only be captioned by highly-paid, highly-trained stenocaptioners.
Reinstatement of the quotas for audio description (called ‘video description’ in the US) is a provision of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which was signed into law by President Obama in October.
The quotas were originally introduced by the FCC in 2000, but its authority to do this was successfully challenged in the United States Court of Appeal five months later.
According to the Closedcaptioning.net website, while captioning on the main US channels is at or close to 100%, the FCC’s caption regulations still include some types of programming which are exempt.
COAT is arguing that captioning has become easier and less expensive in recent years, and these exemptions should be eliminated. They include:
The UK charity and provider of audio, braille and large-print books has named it the “I’d miss…” campaign, encouraging people to consider the children’s stories that they would have missed had they been unavailable. According to RNIB, less than 5% of books are available in braille, audio and large print.
