MeAC – Measuring Progress of eAccessibility in Europe

Legislation/regulations

Analogue TV

The Broadcasting Act 1991 requires that “programmes accessible by disabled persons should be provided within the Canadian broadcasting system as resources become available for the purpose.” The Act also gives the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulatory powers over broadcasting in Canada. This has enabled the setting of specific targets for making programmes more accessible to people with disabilities. For captioning, the CRTC has set targets at 100% of programming for major stations. For commercial broadcasters, depending on the individual station’s licence, up to 90% of programming must be captioned. The CRTC has encouraged all TV broadcasters to include audio description in programming and a minimum of 4 hours of programming with desciptive audio has been set in some individual licenses. Also, in 2006 the Commission approved the licensing and mandatory distribution of ‘The Accessible Channel’, which is a national English-language digital television service that will provide 100 percent of its programming with open format audio description. Also, the CRTC requires that all cable companies with more than 2,000 subscribers carry the 24-hour news reading service ‘VoicePrint’ to their English-language customers. This service broadcasts readings of articles from over 600 newspapers and magazines in Canada for people for whom the print media are not accessible.

Digital TV

Digital TV is not treated separately under Canadian regulations; it is considered to be a technological variation of analogue TV.

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