Ever tried lipreading 'Happy Feet'?
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- Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:54:32 -0400
Online Opinion, Australia
Monday, October 15, 2007
Ever tried lipreading 'Happy Feet'?
By Michael Uniacke
Extract: "The Deafness Forum and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission pounced on the DVD the moment it was realised it had neither
captions nor an audio-description track. These omissions ensured the DVD was
close to useless for new parents who were blind, deaf, or who had vision or
hearing impairments."
If the Federal Government likes to live dangerously, there is a good example in
the deal stitched up last month between the Democrats' Senator Natasha Stott
Despoja and Communications Minister Helen Coonan.
The deal came about after Senator Stott Despoja tabled a motion to call for an
inquiry into the state of electronic media captioning for the millions of
Australians who are deaf and hearing impaired. She will now get what she was
after. Senator Coonan announced an investigation that will look at what has
happened in captioning and other "essential access technologies". It will
assess where Australia is compared with the rest of the world, and look at
access to captions in the light of the rapid technological change that has
taken place in media. The Minister said the investigation will be completed by
April 30 next year, with a report to be tabled in Parliament.
Had Senator Stott Despoja's proposal been debated and defeated along party
lines, the Government would have looked decidedly ugly.
It was already looking silly on this issue when the Department of Families,
Community Services and Indigenous Affairs supported the production of a DVD
called Raising Children. This will be distributed free to parents of newborns.
It was touted as a world first: an interactive guide with information and short
films for new parents.
The Deafness Forum and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
pounced on the DVD the moment it was realised it had neither captions nor an
audio-description track. These omissions ensured the DVD was close to useless
for new parents who were blind, deaf, or who had vision or hearing impairments.
As a result, the department contradicted its own disability action plan, of
which one of the key themes was to "improve the accessibility of our
information products for people with disabilities". And for the inimitable,
Monty Pythonesque touch, this defective DVD was launched by a hearing-impaired
Prime Minister during Hearing Awareness Week.
In one piece of recent good news, the Film Finance Corporation has now made it
compulsory for feature films it supports to have captions. To enjoy such films
will require attending a cinema that will show captioned films. And the bad
news? There are exactly ten cinemas in the entire country which show films with
captions. The inquiry will be able to ask, why, with such commendable policy,
is there such a miniscule number of cinemas in which to show them in the first
place?
Senator Coonan's press release announcing the inquiry commended the free-to-air
broadcasters for approaching their 70 per cent captioning targets for
programming between 6am and midnight. Prime-time FTA television captioning has
already been guaranteed by legislation since 2001. Those wishing to view
captions on television must purchase a television with teletext.
And this is the rub. Apart from deaf and hearing-impaired people, almost no one
in business or government bothers. Very few of the thousands of televisions in
hospitals, waiting rooms, hotels, offices, shopping malls, motels and other
public places come equipped with teletext. Countless videos and DVDs used in
hospitals, schools, TAFEs and universities do not have captions. A large number
of television programs are not captioned, for example, daytime sporting events.
The news is hardly much better for those who might give up and rely on DVDs for
the captions track. Media Access Australia monitors new-release DVDs, and in
its last survey, found a mere 51 per cent included hearing access in the form
of subtitles or captions.
Inaccessible DVDs like Raising Children continue to be churned out. A recent
series of National Geographic DVDs on wildlife themes, promoted and distributed
by the Herald Sun newspaper, have no captioning track, and no audio-description
track for blind and vision-impaired people.
New technology and new services have left captions well behind. Unlike FTA
broadcasting, there is no requirement for captions on prime-time subscription
television. Digital multichannels are exempt from captions, and DVDs of
television programs, or their downloads off the Internet, do not include
captions even if they were on the originals.
These are some of the most recent examples of what has plagued deaf and
hearing-impaired Australians watching television and film. The inquiry however
will be able to scrutinise all of these issues.
When it looks overseas, it will find examples like the UK Film Council. This
government-backed agency has just allocated ₤500,000 to allow independent
local cinemas to improve access, such as buying and installing equipment to
provide captions and audio-description. Included in Senator Stott Despoja's
original proposal was a call for captioning everything on television by 2011.
The inquiry will find out this would merely give deaf and hearing-impaired
Australians what their American counterparts are already enjoying now.
While FTA broadcasters are moving towards their captioning targets, it needs to
be remembered that captions, to the extent we already have them, did not arise
from the goodness of the corporations' hearts. Captions on television and film
happened because deaf individuals stood up and lodged complaints under the
Disability Discrimination Act. These complaints started a chain of enquiries
and negotiations between the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission,
film and television companies, film distributors, and advocacy agencies for
deaf and hearing-impaired people.
With a fresh round of negotiations imminent for both film and television, the
inquiry will show film and FTA broadcasters where they stand in relation to
Senator Coonan's call.
Let there be no doubt of the importance of captions. Pressing the mute button
does not equal the experience of hearing impairment while watching the
television or at the cinema. It is much worse than that. A hearing aid, a
cochlear implant, a listening device, a volume set close to maximum, some
lipreading, or a combination of these may allow comprehension of words and
phrases here and there. But no one will understand the entire dialogue. And no
one has ever managed to lipread the penguins in Happy Feet.
It is most interesting that Senator Coonan's press release referred to a
"personal link to deafness", something she shares with Senator Stott Despoja.
This factor must surely have played some part in uniting these two from
different political parties. The inquiry is good news for millions of
Australians who ask for nothing more than the chance to enjoy film and
television, whenever they wish, in whatever medium, just as do hearing people.
In the end, Senator Coonan deserves credit. And Senator Stott Despoja, who has
fought on this issue for years, will be remembered as a visionary.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6500
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