Deaf And Hard of Hearing New Zealanders Marginalised
Deaf And Hard of Hearing New Zealanders
Marginalised
Imagine if you could not access vital news and information. What would you do?
At 6pm on Friday evening, 11 April 2014, this occurred as there was a total failure in the captioning of the 6pm evening news as broadcast on TVNZ’s Television One.
What does this mean for New
Zealanders who are Deaf or Hard of
Hearing?
1 in 6 New Zealanders who
experience some type of hearing loss were isolated from
obtaining key news update. This large group of New
Zealanders who need to, or will benefit from, using
captioning to augment their ability to understand words
spoken on broadcast mediums such at television were
marginalised. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing sectors are
dependent upon the provision of this news service to be up
to date and socially integrated with what is happening
around New Zealand and abroad.
Do you
think this is acceptable?
The Captioning
Working Group, a high level working group with membership
from the Executives of The National Foundation for the Deaf,
Deaf Aotearoa New Zealand and Hearing Association New
Zealand, is calling for the Ministry of Broadcasting to
include a clause in the Broadcasting and Telecommunications
Act requiring all broadcasters to apply mandatory captioning
to their programmes.
As reported in the 2013 Captioning Working Group Survey, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing sectors, are calling for captioning on Prime television, morning news and events on Breakfast television, the news on TV3, Documentaries, and TV on Demand. These are top priority programmes that the sectors need to have captioned.
Only 23% of programmes on television each week are captioned which compares very poorly to other western countries that have legislation such as the UK and the US who have achieved 100% captioning of public television.
There is no excuse for doing less for New Zealanders who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing and as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities our Government is obliged to apply Article 9, which states:
“To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to”…information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems…. These measures, which shall include the identification and elimination of obstacles and barriers to accessibility, shall apply to, inter alia…b) Information, communications and other services, including electronic services and emergency services.
Ends