The challenges faced by Central and East European broadcasters in delivering access services and complying with EU directives was the main topic of discussion at the EBU’s Access Services Experts group annual plenary meeting, held in Brussels earlier this week.
Jaanus Lillenberg from ERR Estonia and Ernest Strika of HRT Croatia both discussed the financial obstacles they struggle with. They explained that access services are not perceived as a priority and it is difficult to implement EU directives with limited resources.
MEP Sabine Verheyen was also present at the meeting to better explain the roadmap of the European Union. She pointed out that all Europe’s citizens had the right to access audiovisual content: “From what I see today, public service media organisations give a great deal of attention and importance to making their programmes available and accessible to all segments of society.
“They certainly go the extra mile and innovate when it comes to devising subtitling, signed programmes, audio description and audio subtitling which enable sensory challenged people to access valuable audio and audiovisual content all over Europe.”
As a member of the European Parliament’s Culture and Education Committee, Verheyen was closely involved in the adoption of the Directive on the Accessibility of Public Sector Body websites, which is still under discussion. She told the Experts group: “When setting EU-wide standards on public service media organisations, we need to make sure that the quality of their accessibility services is not levelled-down. They have to respond to a very diverse set of needs. In fact, they already fully live up to the provisions of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.”
The meeting was also attended by a wide variety of other speakers. Jurgen Lentz, the head of subtitling at Dutch Member NPO, presented the system of automatic speech recognition used on their programmes. ORF’s Eva-Maria Hinterwirth reported on the successful Eurovision Song Contest sign project, a new initiative which allowed nearly a million sensory disabled people to enjoy the world’s biggest music event in a very inclusive way.
Nigel Megitt from the BBC reported on the latest developments and the roadmap for the EBU-TT family of subtitle document formats.
The group also suggested that the EBU provide a pan-European programme with international sign language to enable public broadcasters to reach specific audiences.
Gion Linder, chairman of the group said, “I am proud that we were able to host a high-profile panel of speakers. The big number of participants emphasises the importance of access services for public broadcasters: Access Services are first and foremost not a duty but an asset for public broadcasters.”
The 2016 Access Services Experts Meeting will take place on November 2nd in Berlin.
