l’azile

I have been meaning to write about this but stuff got in the way. I read on the Fagstein blog a couple of weeks ago that there will be a new television channel in Canada: The Accessible Channel. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will require that the new channel, which should be launched in April 2008, be carried in all packages by cable and satellite providers and it will mean a very slight increase in fees for subscribers (2.40$ a year). An article on VoicePrint explains:

(…) the recent approval by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for The Accessible Channel, a national, English-language digital specialty service that will feature only “described” as well as “closed-captioned” programming, is a major breakthrough for Canadians with diminished vision or hearing.

Since 1995, the CRTC required large English-language over-the-air broadcasters to caption 90% of all programming for the deaf and hearing-impaired by the end of the licence term, and 100% of local news by September 1998. It expected medium-sized stations and encouraged small stations to achieve similar levels. In 2001, the Commission began to require, by condition of licence, the captioning of 90% of all programming over the broadcast day and 100% of all news. As for French-language broadcasters, the Commission was a little more lenient because apparently, it was said to be harder to caption French content since the technology they had to work with was developed for the English language and did not easily accommodate the French language. It was also argued that there was a lack of trained captionists for French-language programming.

Then, in May of this year, the CRTC ruled that English and French-language broadcasters will be required to caption 100% of their programs over the broadcast day, with the exception of advertising and promos (and allowing for certain exceptions such as technical malfunctions and human errors or other circumstances beyond the broadcaster’s control).

As for adapting television for the blind and visually-impaired, in 1999, the CRTC encouraged all television broadcasters to include audio description in their programming and starting in 2001/2002, major broadcasters such as CTV, Global and TVA were expected to provide audio description “wherever it is appropriate“.

I am not an expert in television matters (after all, I was, until last year, without a television for a few years and the only reason I have cable is because my flat-mate was already subscribed when I moved in) but I do have a few, for lack of a better word, reservations. I worry about what this will mean for audio description on other channels. I wonder if this will just be an excuse for other broadcasters to not provide audio description (not that they were doing much of that anyway) since there will be a specialised channel providing the service. I mean, should the CRTC not require that at least 90% of programming on all major channels be audio described (or, at the very least, a significant percentage thereof) instead of wherever appropriate, which sounds rather vague and subjective?

One thing I will say that is definitely positive is the amount of Canadian content that will end up being audio-described. According to the new channel’s application, 60% of programming aired over the broadcast day (06:00AM to 06:00PM) and 50% of programming aired between 06:00PM and midnight will be Canadian content. Considering that the only audio-described content I have ever “seen” was American (and this was one of the things that worried me when I first heard about this new channel), that seems like a vast improvement to me.

I also hope that this will be an opportunity to have more disability-specific content on the air. Back in the 1990’s, I would not miss an episode of CBC’s DNet. It was the only show that was distinctly Canadian, focused on disability and not shying away from human rights issues. But when the CBC decided to transform it into a “life-style” show, Moving On, it definitely became less interesting to me. And considering that Moving On was recently cancelled because, apparently, they “(…) can cover these important issues more effectively by presenting that subject material through different programs, rather than one”, this does not bode well for representation of persons with disabilities on Canadian airwaves. And although I have not seen anything disability-specific on The Accessible Channel’s projected schedule in their application, hopefully they will sieze this opportunity to encourage, promote and produce disability-focused programming.

So good luck to The Accessible Channel. Providing I still have cable next year, I will be watching.