Television

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has just released the final report into its statutory review of captioning rules. While ACMA, as the independent statutory authority, does not recommend specific legislative amendments in the report it has just tendered, it has made three key findings.

Over the decades, iconic children’s TV show, Sesame Street, has always been good at raising awareness around a wide variety of sections of the community. The latest character to join the muppet family is Julia, who has autism, and makes her debut in April 2017.

At last, some good news on the captioning front. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) reported in late December 2016 of a high level of compliance with captioning targets during the 2015-2016 financial year. However, their reporting period did not cover the back end of last year which saw multiple captioning issues emerge on the ABC and other networks, which proves more work needs to be done.

Ai-Media has been given a contract renewal to provide broadcast captioning for BBC Worldwide Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) for a further three years. In the deal, they will continue to supply captioning for BBC First, UKTV, BBC Knowledge and CBeebies on broadcast platforms across both territories.