MeAC – Measuring Progress of eAccessibility in Europe

Legislation/regulations

Analogue TV

There are no specific legislative or regulatory provisions in relation to accessibility of Danish analogue or digital broadcasting. However, there are references to eAccessibility in the public service contracts with two broadcasters, DR and TV2. In the public service contract between the Ministry of Culture and DR of 3rd January 2007, there is a paragraph on “Services for the Disabled”. This says that DR will strengthen disabled persons’ access to the public service offerings during the contract period by using voice recognition technology, captioning, visual sign translation and sign translation and other new technologies. By 2012 all broadcasts must be subtitled. In addition, DR must within the contract period:

• use speech recognition technology, subtitling, visual translation and sign language translation as well as other new technologies to support disabled persons’ access to the public service offerings
• make pilot trials/test with visual translation. On the basis of these trials DR must by 1st January 2009 make a proposal on how much visual translation should be available at the end of the contract period
• provide at least one news broadcast each evening that is fully subtitled. In connection to parliamentary elections all political party presentations, the broadcast with all the political leaders and the election act itself must be fully subtitled, including live broadcasts. These broadcasts must also be translated into sign language
• increase the collective share of subtitled broadcasting hours, and
• strive to transmit events of great social importance and interest either subtitled or sign-language translated

As part of the 2003 public service contract between the Ministry of Culture and DR, DR broadcasts 10 minutes of signed news per day (Monday to Friday). The special sign language news can also be received on the Internet from the DR website.

Digital TV

In relation to the digital broadcasts, DR must agree with TV2 and the regional TV2 subsidiaries to develop, produce and broadcast a common electronic program guide (EPG) which, as a minimum, covers broadcasting from the digital multiplex (which is the block of digital data broadcast through a digital earth based broadcasting network, collectively and which can contain both TV signals and other data) and offer sign-language translation of at least two of the ordinary news broadcasts on DR1 and/or DR2 each day between 5-12pm.

Other initiatives

Dictus is a computer-based speech-to-text system. In TV broadcasts, speech which is recognised by the system is re-spoken by a speaker at the same time he or she is listening to the spoken word. The re-speaker simplifies the speech and shortens the speech, where necessary. The system then translates the re-spoken stream of speech to sub-titles. For a TV viewer the subtitles have a 3-5 second delay. Development of the system was part of the public service agreement between DR and TV2 on enlarging services for the deaf and hearing impaired and was financed by the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Science, DR and TV2.

To avoid SPAM-abuse of the e-mail address the ‘@’ sign was written as ‘a t’ and each dot ‘.’ as ‘d o t’.
Please change the recipient address of your message accordingly. We apologize for this inconvenience.