Deaf TV viewers left out of the picture by poor levels of subtitling
The Irish Deaf Society says less than a tenth of all Irish broadcasting is subtitled, with TV3 and NTL the worst offenders.
“Irish deaf people have every reason to feel frustrated and discriminated against,” said chairman Kevin Stanley. “They pay the same TV licence as the hearing population, yet while hearing people can enjoy full access, deaf people are getting inadequate treatment.”
Deaf people can access subtitles on popular programmes such as Fair City, Coronation Street and RTÉ’s Six-One by viewing page 888 on teletext.
Although RTÉ claims that 80% of its peak-time programming is subtitled, the Irish Deaf Society says this only accounts for five-and-a-half hours out of 24.
“In actual fact, current peak-time subtitling on RTE1 and Network 2 is just under 50%, with total peak-time subtitling levels across all four Irish channels weighing in at a disappointing 38%,” Mr Stanley said.
Despite lobbying by the Deaf Society, the Government did not include any minimum subtitling standards in the Broadcasting Bill. The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland is working on an Equal Access Code, but it also has to publish a children’s advertising code, as well as selecting a new board.
The Irish Deaf Society says that TG4, which provides English subtitles for most of its programmes, was ahead of TV3 and RTÉ.
RTÉ’s transmission service television manager admitted that the station’s level of subtitling did fluctuate.
“We are still a good bit away from 100% subtitling. It is a very, very complicated process and very expensive. But two years ago we only had two people working on subtitling. Now we have three, and two contracts with an independent company. That’s a massive improvement,” Isabel Charleton correct spellingsaid.
It takes eight hours to subtitle a 30-minute episode of Fair City.
The transmission service department must ensure that RTÉ news reporters supply copies of their scripts before the news is broadcast and search for subtitles for imported films.
An independent company provides live subtitling on current affairs programmes like Questions and Answers and Primetime. Ms Charleton’s department is already over its €700,000 budget because of large-scale events like the Special Olympics. It has received a €200,000 allocation from RTÉ to upgrade its subtitling transmission equipment, which should be operational at the end of this year.
The Irish Deaf Society has described TV3’s attitude to deaf people as “horrendous”. Its only subtitled programmes are Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Meanwhile, deaf subscribers to NTL’s digital service in Galway, Waterford and Dublin cannot access subtitles using teletext.
TV3 was not available for comment, but NTL said subtitling was already available for the programmes on the four British channels BBC1, BBC2, UTV and Channel Four. It added that subtitling would be available on all of its digital channels “very shortly”.
“Customer feedback is very important to us and we are always willing to meet different societies,” spokeswoman Anne-Marie Barry said.
