Geneva, Switzerland, 25 October 2013

TV Accessibility in China: The Current Situation, Challenges

and Actions

Dongxiao LiZhejiang University, China

ldongxiao@126.com

ITU Workshop on “Making Media Accessible to all:The options and the economics”

(Geneva, Switzerland, 24 (p.m.) – 25 October 2013)

1. Audience demographics

There are 13 million visually-impaired persons in China (0.1% of total)Annual growth: 450,000 blind and 1.35 million low-vision individuals.27.8 million persons in China have serious hearing impairments (2.1%)Annual growth: 30,000 are born deaf, 30-50,000 suffer serious hearing impairments.

2. TV Viewing and Disability

Survey of needs in eastern China 2010

TV is still the most widely-used medium, used by

87.9% of the hearing impaired and 86.6% of the visually impaired

TV is one of the few sources of information in their daily life if provided with subtitles (for viewers with hearing impairments)

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2. TV Viewing and DisabilityThe most-watched genres are News, TV documentaries & Entertainment. The main motives are information, ‘education’ in its broad sense and to kill time with entertainment.Most viewers with disabilities spend 1-3 hours on TV primarily during prime time (6–10 pm).More than ninety percent of respondents with hearing disabilities indicate that they need subtitles to understand TV content better, in particular news programs. Respondents show modest satisfaction with Chinese TV programs Persons with visual impairments are more satisfied than viewers with hearing impairments

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3: Access services - TV Captioning

In the TV programming analyzed: More than half of the TV programs (56.6%) had captioningCaptioning figures were lowest for news & sports, especially live news and sports events.

CCTV-13 (News Channel) 24.3%.CCTV-5 (Sports Channel) 1.7%.

Captioning highest for TV series and cartoons. Live broadcasts constitute a serious challenge for captioning in China.

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3: Access services - TV Captioning

All TV captioning in China is currently ’open’.No Closed Captioning (CC) has been available to date.There are technical reasons for this (no CC capability in analogue or digital terrestrial TV).The increasing availability of Integrated Broadcast/Broadband TVs (also known as Smart or Connected TVs) will remove this technical barrier.

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A TV Documentary with Captions

4: Sign language on TVChina currently has 1,300 TV channelsApproximately 150 broadcast sign-language programs. (11.5%). Most sign language programs are on local TV channels.The main TV genre with sign-language is TV news (80% of the total are ten-minute news bulletins). Since October 22 2011 CCTV has been broadcasting ‘Gontong Guanzhu’ (Common Concern) with sign-language interpretation. Nearly all sign-language programs show the sign language in a small window at the bottom of the main screen.

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Gong Tong Guan Zhu (CCTV News)

5: Audio Description (AD) on TV

There is currently no AD on TV in mainland China - but there are some trials using films.AD is offered in Hong Kong and Taiwan.Our study showed that very few people had ever heard of AD.

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6: Legislation

In 2008 April, the Chinese government promulgated ‘the People's Republic of China Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons’ within the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. There are TV accessibility provisions in the law that the local governments and social organizations should take measures to promote TV accessibility, including producing sign-language TV programs, broadcasting features about disabled people and promoting subtitles in TV programs and films.

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7. Challenges

Only open captioning in TV programs; no Closed Captioning. No captioning on live TV programs; technical challenges to produce them.No AD service in Chinese TV programs to date;The quality of sign-language programs is low; sign-language provisions do not match the needs of intended audience.

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8. Actions - What are we doing?

Making the case for action:Research: team, projects, funds, areas;Investigation: Documenting the needs of hearing and visually-impaired viewersConference: Media-accessibility workshop(Hangzhou,2012) to raise awarenessCooperation: inter-universities; governments; social organization; international level; knowledge-sharing

Proof of concept: Running a pilot in Zhejiang ProvinceGeneva, Switzerland, 25 October 2013 13

Thank you for listening!

Dongxiao LI

LecturerCollege of Media & International CultureZhejiang UniversityHangzhouPeople's Republic of China

E-mail: <ldongxiao@126.com>

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