Captioning Deregulation (Commonwealth Government)
The Department of Communication is planning to change how captioning is controlled on free-to-air and Foxtel channels in Australia.
At the moment, there are regulations that mean channels must follow the captioning standards and report to ACMA about how well they are doing this.
The Government wants to change this, so that the channels do not have to do this reporting. They would prefer a system where individual people have to make a complaint it the captioning is not up to standard, because they say it will be easier and less work for the TV channels.
From July 2014 – free to air televisions are required to provide 100 per cent captioning from 6am to midnight on primary channels (Eg ABC, Channel 7, Channel 10 etc).
Under the new rules, if viewers are not happy with captioning they will have to make a complaint.
ACMA reported a high level of compliance with the annual captioning target requirements for 2012-13 reporting period. For instance, 100 per cent of commercial free to air and 99 percent of subscription broadcasters achieved their annual captioning target.
Deregulation means:
- Free to air broadcasters do not need to provide an annual report.
- Any problems with captions, you have to lodge a complaint for any bad captioning.
Deaf Australia is keen to know what you think about these possible changes, so we can include your opinions in our submission to Government on 9 December 2014.
We have created a survey on our website for you to complete. Your feedback in the survey will help us better understand your issues on this important topic for Deaf people. The survey will be available to complete until 8am on Friday 5 December.
Please contribute to this important survey.
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