Broadcasting
Chair: Dan Jellinek
Panellists:
Leen Petre, Principal Manager, Media and Culture, RNIB
Geoff Adams-Spink, Age and Disability Correspondent, BBC

The switchover to digital TV from analogue may create more services but also more barriers to accessing information and entertainment for people with disabilities such as vision and mobility impairments. Electronic programme guides (on-screen menus) are inaccessible to many and in an ageing population, the problem will worsen. Similar issues relating to digital radio will also be covered.

Five Key Points

- The current system of accessibility for TV audio description is too driven by legal quotas, and there are gaps in the system. This means for example broadcasters pay a company to do audio description and then pay an actor to read it, for the TV broadcast, but then don't put the track onto their DVD version because they don't have to. Broadcasters must make all formats accessible.

- There are major problems brewing with the regulation of TV content delivered over the internet. At present this is completely unregulated in th eUK as it is not considered TV at all. But in the US they apply the duck test - if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, then it's a duck.

- MPs do not necessarily understand all the issues of making broadcasting accessible, but they don't need to - lobby groups just need to bug the hell out of them until they act and improve the legislation.

- There are dangers in an unregulated internet but in seeking regulation one must be careful what one wishes for - in China they regulate the internet and no-one likes it. So the broadcasting industry need to step up to the plate and respond before the government has to, with effective self-regulation.

- Manufacturers of broadcasting hardware like TV sets should be forced to make it easier to use: if you can ban a standby button on TVs for environmental reasons, then you could also do a lot more in the area of accessibility, despite manufacturers saying they can't afford to do more.