er requires a reminder in the diary. British audiences, like those elsewhere, increasingly feed their TV habit using “on-demand” services like Sky, Netflix and Virgin TiVo. By one estimate, conventional broadcast television now accounts for less than half of the video consumed by 16- to 24-year-olds. It is through such an on-demand service that Kimberley Lucas’s boyfriend has lately been watching “The Wire”, a cops-and-robbers drama. But Ms Lucas, who is deaf, cannot join in. Whereas she could have watched the series with subtitles when it was originally broadcast, the helpful transcriptions have fallen away during the move online. http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21705868-demand-programming-replaces-broadcast-deaf-viewers-are-left-out-read-my-lips The hard of hearing (as well as those who struggle with the Baltimore accents in “The Wire”) are well served by broadcast television in Britain. Ofcom, the regulator, has overseen a rise in subtitling to more than 80% of programming on most channels. But its rules do not apply to on-demand television, which by comparison is a “Wild West”, says Matt Simpson of Ericsson, a firm that provides subtitles. More than 150,000 hours of on-demand content are published each year without captions. Some platforms, such as the BBC’s iPlayer—which started to offer live online subtitling, a world first, just in time for the Rio Olympic games—do far better than others. Almost all of the BBC’s on-demand content carries subtitles. Just 15% of the services available through Sky were similarly accessible in 2015, according to Action on Hearing Loss, a charity.
Sky has promised to bring that figure up. But years of complaints from Britain’s 900,000 deaf people have done little to budge on-demand providers. In 2013 the government promised to consider legislation if there had not been “progress” by July 2016. But the threat was withdrawn before the end of last year, by which point just 22 of Britain’s 90 on-demand providers were offering subtitles. Deaf Britons look enviously at America, where the government enforces equal service across broadcast and on-demand TV. Modern subtitles are simple to create, and curiously human. In a booth in west London, Jon Luke, one of 400 “re-speakers” with Ericsson, repeats every word of a BBC programme into a microphone, adding punctuation vocally. Producing subtitles in this way is easier than hiring stenographers, as was common a decade ago, and more accurate than relying on machines to turn words into text. But whereas subtitles made this way work well with television broadcasts, they do not fit with on-demand platforms. The format is based on Teletext, an all but obsolete technology. So engineers must copy the original into the 18 formats used by the various on-demand players, from Apple to Xbox. Neither programme-makers nor broadcasters want to foot that bill. Ofcom may step in if the stalemate persists. This month it hinted that it would gradually align its rules for broadcast and on-demand television. That would frustrate the industry. But it would allow viewers like Ms Lucas to catch up with everyone else at last. -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
