ABSTRACT
The Case for TV Accessibility at DR
Peter Molsted, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, DR (Denmark)
DR is a public service broadcaster that has been working on TV accessibility for several decades.
In the last 10 years, the focus has shifted from disability to accessibility – from a narrow remit to address the
needs of viewers who are blind or deaf and hard-of-hearing to making TV accessible to the widest-possible
audience.
The presentation highlights this shift by referring to two specific cases:
- the introduction of audio or spoken subtitles for TV programming in foreign languages on DR’s main channel,
DR1 and
- the introduction of Audio Description and the issues this raises for television standardization.
The first demonstrates that there is a good business case for introducing such a service in countries that use
subtitling for foreign language content.
The second highlights the importance of reaching an industry-wide consensus in standardization bodies about
mandatory requirements for access services, rather than formulating optional requirements.