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Media release: Captioning inquiry

Access media release announcing the 2012 inquiry into closed captioning of television under the Disability Discrimination Act and television accessibility.

Disability rights Media Release 14 December 2012

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Summary

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission today announced an inquiry under the Disability Discrimination Act into closed captioning of television.

Media release: Captioning inquiry

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission today announced an inquiry under the Disability Discrimination Act into closed captioning of television.

Commissioner Chris Sidoti said that captioning to provide access to information and entertainment on television was a major issue for deaf and hearing impaired people.

"This inquiry is about cultural and political participation for millions of Australians", the Commissioner said.

The Disability Discrimination Act, in force since 1993, requires services to be equally accessible to people with a disability, including people who are deaf or have a hearing impairment, except to the extent that this would impose unjustifiable hardship.

The current proportion of Australian broadcasts captioned, however, appears to be a low 13%, compared to 45% in the U.K. and 90% in the United States.

The Commission sees the provision for captioning standards in the digital conversion legislation just passed by the Parliament as an important step. But it only appears to refer to news, current affairs and prime time TV, and not to other important areas like children's programming. Access to digital TV also seems some years away, particularly for lower income people.

Commissioner Sidoti said the inquiry would provide a public forum for industry, community and government to discuss the meaning and implementation of the rights and obligations which already exist under the Disability Discrimination Act. He hoped it would contribute to debate about standards which should apply in future to digital television services, as well as informing the Commission in applying the Disability Discrimination Act to existing services.

"We are also interested in submissions on whether we should inquire more broadly into related issues like captioning of videos" Commissioner Sidoti said.

The Commission intends to make submissions available on its Internet site and, after considering initial submissions, to produce an issues paper for public comment in a second stage of the inquiry. Submissions are requested by 4 September 1998.

Details of the inquiry are available from the disability rights section of the Commission's Internet site, at http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/index.html, or by contacting the Commission by fax (02 9284 9849), email (disability@humanrights.gov.au) or mail (GPO Box 5218 Sydney 1042).

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