Television

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ACMA rules on captioning breaches by Nine and Seven

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The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has completed two investigations following complaints about captioning on programs broadcast by the Nine and Seven networks. In both cases, it found that the networks were in breach of captioning obligations, but has disregarded the breaches because they were caused by technical difficulties that could not reasonably have been foreseen.

The complaint against the Nine network related to an episode of The Big Bang Theory broadcast on TCN and GTV on 9 January 2013 in which the captions were intermittent. In submissions to the ACMA, Nine stated that the program had originally been captioned to tape in 2009, and there was a compatibility problem with these captions and the file-based system now used at its National Playout Centre.


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Review of the Panasonic Smart Viera TH-L42E6A, a ‘talking TV’ with Voice Guidance

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Panasonic’s 2013 range of Viera ‘smart TVs’ are the first in Australia to have a text-to-speech function which will be of great benefit to blind and vision impaired consumers. The function, called ‘Voice Guidance’, was developed in the by Panasonic in the UK, in conjunction with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Media Access Australia’s project manager Ally Woodford gave it a test.

I connected the television simply with the aerial cable and power cable. The TV can be connected to a range of external equipment to record or play video.

When I turned on the power there was no sound and no text instruction to suggest how to activate the Voice Guidance. The on-screen option was to select your viewing environment of ‘Home’ or ‘Shop’. I selected Home.


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Lack of audio description a breach of human rights

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Blind Citizens Australia (BCA) yesterday lodged 21 disability discrimination complaints against the Federal Government and the ABC for failing to provide an audio description service on television.

Audio description is the descriptive narration of a TV program or other media, making them accessible for the blind and vision impaired. It was successfully trailed on ABC1 between August and November last year, with 14 hours of programs broadcast with audio description each week for 13 weeks. After its completion, the then Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, said, “It’s clear that audio description is a service that is strongly desired by the vision impaired community and the trial was embraced with real enthusiasm by participants.”


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