The Power to Change Lives
David Wood WBU/EBU
Zagreb, December 2013
Some possible objectives for the
meeting?
• Discuss the need and options for access
systems.
• Examine relevant case studies.
• Discuss options for possible ‘roadmap’ for
access services
• Discuss options for funding.
• Prepare conclusions.
• Your suggestions?
Why do we all consume media?
• To help us find our ‘identity
• Where do I ‘fit’ in society?
• Which groups do I belong to?
• What is our national identity?
• What is happening in the world?
• Can I be diverted for a while?
• Can I identify with characters in the drama?
• What is the day to day information I need?
•Those with disabilities can need these even more
than those without disabilities.
Audience Communities with Disabilities
and Special Needs
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Blindness
Deafness
The Elderly
Learning difficulties
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Motor impairments
Attention Deficit Disorder
Autism
Dyslexia
Charge syndrome
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Cued Speech
Spina Bifida
Stuttering
Traumatic Brain Injury
Mental Handicap
Gifted
Means to serve the disabled
communities using the media
• Special programmes
• Include portrayal of disabled people.
• Greater involvement by the disabled in
programme making and the media.
• Measures to make all programmes more
accessible
• Society may have to ‘prioritize’ disabilities.
The fact that ‘access services’ are
an important ‘cause’ is clear.
But broadcasters face funding
dilemmas.
Where should broadcasters best
spend their funds and energy?
• More and better access services for those with
disabilities?
• Greener broadcasting?
• Transition to IT programme production?
• Infrastructure for Internet delivery?
• Transition to HDTV and UHDTV?
• Higher cost majority programming?
• More linguistic minority programming?
Today we have a range of media delivery tools
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Normal (SDTV) broadcasting
HDTV broadcasting
Interactive broadcast applications
FM and digital radio
Broadband VoD
Broadband interactive applications
Mobile phones
Broadcasting to handhelds
Options today for Access Services
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Broadcast Services
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Subtitles
Audio Descriptions
Audio local language sub-titles
Signing overlay
Clean audio (broadcast format)
Radio to text conversion
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Web services
• Transcripts and playback – ‘script mining’
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Receiver features
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User-friendly receivers
Audio rate control
Clean audio (receiver format)
Spoken programme guides
And higher quality helps too....
• HDTV helps people with moderate sight
disabilities
• UHDTV will help even more
• 3DTV brings to light correctable sight
problems
• The use of ‘loudness’ control helps audio
descriptions and spoken subtitles..
One local example: Script mining using the web –
developed in Slovenia
There are many tools available,
but...
The menu needed for access
services...
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The financial means to generate the service
The staff skills needed, and ‘high quality’.
The appropriate equipment in users hands
Awareness of the services by users.
The ‘business’ of media
What makes media services
successful?
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The Old Factors
Price
Content available
Furniture value
Image/Sound Quality
Usability
Continuous Externalities
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The New Elements
Playback failure
Social context
Contiguous Externalities
Prior experiences/Expectations
Personal skills available
The Inactive Generation
34-to-David Wood years’
old
The Interactive Generation
16-to-34 years’ old
The starting new media problem:
create a ‘virtuous circle’
Viewer experience
Finance
Media content
Which
finance model?
Level 1 service
Community at large. Conventional
income (licence, grant, advertising).
Level 2 service
Significant groups. Partial funding
from conventional income.
Level 3 service
Modest groups. Self financing.
The UN Convention (UN CRPD)
• Signatories “shall take appropriate measures to
ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy access to
television programmes, etc
• FG-AVA interpretation:
1. Gradually make subtitling and audio descriptions
available for all significant programmes over the next
ten years.
2..Gradually make signing, audio rate control. Clean
audio, and auxiliary text for radio over the next 15
years.
The Power to Change Lives.
• Today, media services make ‘some’ provisions for the
disabled and elderly communities.
• Either special programs can be made for these
communities or programmes for the general audience can
include features which help them to follow.
• Both are needed, and welcomed, but could a global view
of ‘Special Needs’ and the totality of media tools help? Are
we doing as much as we could? Do we have the priorities
right?
• Technology and media has the power to change lives.
Extract from FG-AVA reports
“We observe that the greatest barrier today to
the wider use of access systems is the lack of
an economic basis for providing the services.
Broadcasters and content providers need to
be able to finance the provision of the
services. Creative and innovative methods of
doing so are needed.”