ACMA CITIZEN CONVERSATION EVENT – LIVE CAPTIONING: LET’S TALK - 15 SEPTEMBER 2015
WELCOME
JONQUIL RITTER: Good morning. My name is Jonquil Ritter. I am the Executive Manager of the Broadcasting Safeguards Branch here at the Australian Communications and Media Authority, otherwise known as the ACMA. I am your MC and I'd like to welcome everyone this morning to the Citizen Conversation event. Let me start by acknowledging the Eora people who are the traditional custodians of this land. I would also like to pay respect to the elders past and present of the Eora nation and extend that respect to other Aboriginal people present.
Thank you for joining us to consider live captioning. We have provided attendees with access to a hearing loop, Auslan interpreters and captioners and this may mean there will be slight delays. If you are having trouble accessing any of these services, please inform one of the ACMA staff who are wearing yellow safety pinned name badges and who are located at the back of the room. I request at this point that we all switch off our mobile phones. Unless you are expecting an urgent phone call we would ask that mobiles be switched off as they may create potential interference for hearing loop users in a small venue like this.
Next, I would like to refer you to your captioning pack. Please raise your hand if you do not have an information pack and one of our staff will bring one to you. The pack contains the program for today and information about our guest presenters and panel members. It also contains general information about captioning, the ACMA's role and what steps a person can take to make a complaint. There is a basic map of where you are located in the building, where the bathrooms are and where all the exits, including emergency exits, are located. In the unlikely event of an evacuation, you will be directed to the emergency exits which are located near the lifts. Information and products from the National Relay Service, which is an Australia wide phone service for people who are deaf or have a hearing or speech impairment.
I encourage you to reflect throughout the day on the presentations and discussions. If anything comes up and you don't have the opportunity to raise it today, please feel free to contact us at a later time. Our contact details are in the pack. Also, if you would like someone to ask a question on your behalf today, please feel free to write your question down and hand it to one of the ACMA staff who again can be identified by yellow safety pinned name badges sitting at the back of the room.
I hope that you enjoy today's event. Please welcome Chris Chapman, Chairman of the ACMA, who will introduce us to today's topic of live captioning. Chris commenced as the inaugural chairman and CEO of the ACMA in February 2006. Through his time as the ACMA chair, he has witnessed the ACMA's evolving role in the captioning space and has overseen the improvements to captioning quality. Chris.
INTRODUCTION
CHRIS CHAPMAN: That was an unusual introduction, Jonquil. I think what you're trying to say is I'm old. Anyway, thank you and noone does introductions better and for framing the day so thank you for that. And thank you to everyone here this morning for making the time to attend this important Citizen Conversation series on live captioning.
Our speakers have travelled from both across the country and indeed from the world to present to us today. So I'd like to extend a very, very warm welcome to them. Actually, to all of us participating here in this Citizen Conversation. The ACMA has been very active in progressing the captioning of television programs in Australia. Along with many of you present today, we've worked to improve not only the amount of captioning available to viewers, but the quality of the captioning provided. Indeed, the utility of that captioning, a focus on the outcome. However, our mandate is ongoing and so we now continue our efforts by focussing on where further improvements might be nurtured.
Today, we're looking to take your contributions and use them to further shape captioning's future. For the ACMA, the concept of the Citizen Conversation is simple it is for citizens, Australian citizens and consumers, industry representatives and industry advocacy groups, government representatives, academics, researchers and consumer groups to get together in hopefully a nonadversarial way, and I'm sure that will be the case, to share information and perspectives about an aspect of regulation in an increasingly converged media landscape.
So the Citizen Conversation events, like the one being held today, are an important part of our role to bring together many voices to explore scenarios and help develop solutions that meets the needs of a number of the stakeholders I've touched on. In other words, in this context, making media work, that is really work, for all Australians. In particular, the ACMA is dedicated to increasing citizen engagement with government and industry and in the process achieving better outcomes.
Over the last four years we've hosted a number of Citizen Conversations on topical issues raising from young citizens in a changing media world, to promote the interests of youth in media, to seeking input into the more challenging of the broadcasting code matters such as decency and privacy. These events have been held as part of the ACMA's stakeholder engagement disposition as it conducts reviews into particular issues which we've identified as likely to benefit specifically from this broader public citizen and industry involvement. In some cases these events have raised more questions along the way, provoked intelligent and challenging debate or cemented existing perspectives but they definitely get people talking, and thinking. Today's conversation is intended to give us all an opportunity to usefully discuss one of the key emerging issues in captioning live captioning for television programs.
You've indicated you're keen to participate in this discussion about live captioning and we're keen to facilitate the exchange of ideas and thoughts and to capture this information in a meaningful way. Like other regulators around the world, for example Ofcom in the United Kingdom or CRTC in Canada and the FCC in the United States, we're currently reflecting on the quality of live captioning of television programs. Now the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Act 2015 requires the ACMA to review, and vary as appropriate, the Television Captioning Quality Standard by 19 March 2016. So today's conversation is going to inform that review.
There are many reasons why captioning is important in our society. 13% of Australians, about 1 in 8, as I'm told, are either deaf or hearingimpaired, and this figure is rising because of our ageing population. The Australian Network on Disability predicts 1 in every 4 Australians will experience hearing loss by 2050. More Australians will find family, friends and possibly even themselves relying on captions in the nottoodistant future and indeed, my children tell me I'm already at that point.
As a nation, we're consuming media faster and to a much greater degree than ever before. So ensuring that audio visual media is acceptable for all of the population is actually even more critical than ever. Captioning gives viewers, who are deaf or hearingimpaired, access to what is being said on a television program, whether it's a news report about a traffic incident in the local area, a punch line in a television comedy, or colour commentary in a sports broadcast. While captioning is generally intended to assist those viewers with a hearing impairment, it's also used for openair broadcasts, in education, and by people whose first language is not English.
However, captions do more than just present dialogue as text onscreen. Imagine you're watching your favourite crime show, the two main characters are having a conversation when very suddenly they turn away mid conversation. The captioning indicates there have been gunshots in the background, off-screen. In this case, the visuals alone are not telling the real story. Captioning acts as a tool to ensure that the viewers who rely on captioning know what else is going on, including the background sounds. In a nutshell, it makes it a meaningful experience for the viewer. In this way, captioning has the job of conveying not only the words but the unspoken, the off camera, the atmosphere, the feel and the tone of the screened presentation, so that the program is meaningful.
But captioning does more than just allow the deaf and hearingimpaired community to understand and thereby enjoy the media. It allows those individuals to take an active part in what is happening around them. Captioning enables urgent information to be delivered quickly, informing the community of critical information, such as emergencies and natural disasters, that may affect them or their loved ones.
Captions have been proven to assist children and those with adult illiteracy to build their reading skills and assist in language development for those whose first language is different from the captioning, such as migrants. Watching captioned programs over 3 to 5 years has been shown to turn viewers into confident readers. The Indiawide program, Planet Read, has demonstrated that captioning is assisting millions of illiterate citizens to build their reading skills. In a country where film and music are integral to daily life and culture, the captioning of Bollywood songs across regional India is assisting children in schools to build literacy skills and showing remarkable results for virtually illiterate adults.
Equally interesting is that broadcasters are benefitting from captioning since it extends their reach into the community and so potentially increasing their viewership. A study conducted by Discovery Digital Networks suggested that adding closed captions to YouTube videos added 7.32% increase in viewers over time. Closed captioning in public, noisy environments such as airports and gyms, can help communicate the meaning of programs to all viewers in an otherwise loud place. From these examples, we get an insight that the benefits of captioning go well beyond its original, more narrow purpose and are indeed far reaching. Captioning facilitates social inclusion, educational progress and can be just simply good business.
Now, it's not all sweetness and light. There have been, and continue to be, many challenges to captioning. The initial challenges of access were confronted by deaf and hearingimpaired viewers, their families and advocacy groups. They have worked hard and assiduously over the years to improve access to information and services. As part of this conversation event, the ACMA is keen to recognise the important role that citizens and their advocates play in assisting the ACMA balance these needs, these access needs, together with the imperatives and operational dictates of the industry players.
Certainly some captioning challenges have been overcome with the introduction of technology. For example, when captioning was first introduced, it required people to buy a settop box which was attached to the television set. These days all televisions have that inbuilt capability of showing captions when they're available. There's also been improvements in captioning technology. Specialist equipment may be used by trained stenographers to caption speech and any other sound effects and we're also seeing the rise in the use of voice recognition software as the technology there has significantly improved.
Voice recognition, or respeak technology, involves a trained individual respeaking spoken content, adding punctuation, describing sound effects and music and where practical, conveying the manner and tone of voice used. Further technological advances may also be around the corner, such as improvements to auto captioning functionality. For example, this would allow software to recognise different newsreaders and caption what they're saying with minimal third party involvement.
Other challenges have been dealt with by industry itself. Since the introduction of captioning obligations, the captioning service provider industry has grown and changed. The captioning service providers are not limiting themselves to providing captioning services for television programs but some have also expanded their service to include captioning for conferences and live theatre performances, award shows, schools and in workplaces. I'm told that Disneyland, for example, now captions their rides and live shows to add value for their deaf and hearingimpaired theme park goers. Businesses have adapted and improved what they can offer to their customers. What was once developed to meet the captioning requirements for television programs has grown to building a more inclusive society on many different levels. Through our work collectively with captioning television programs, we have all played a part in that. And finally, some captioning issues have simply required the government, through its regulator, the ACMA, to take a lead and develop sound policy.
Is Kath Silleri here? I know Kath Silleri is joining us today and I wanted to acknowledge the smart, intuitive, empathetic leadership role that she played. Kath's currently with the Department but played that role within the ACMA several years ago. So I will convey that to Kath when she arrives.
In Australia, if you turn on a television between 6:00am and midnight you should expect that all programs on freetoair commercial and national broadcasters' primary channels are captioned. Cooking shows, sports, dramas, movies, all genres of programming in this timeframe must have captioning. It is also compulsory outside these hours to caption all news and current affairs programming on these primary channels. Subscription television services have different rules based on captioning increments and genres. Providing captioning under these rules, all of these rules, is a requirement for all broadcasters and narrowcasters.