MeAC – Measuring Progress of eAccessibility in Europe

Legislation/regulations

Analogue TV

No direct legislation exists in Sweden. However, broadcasting licences issued by the Government may be subject to conditions stipulating that broadcasts are accessible.

The public service broadcaster (SVT) and Tv4 have broadcasting agreements that state that they must provide subtitling on some programmes and that they must strive to be accessible for everyone. For SVT, at least 50% of broadcasting time for programming of Swedish origin being shown for the first time was to be subtitled by the end of the license period (then running from January 2002 to December 2005).

The broadcasting licence for Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company (UR) stipulates that UR shall consider the needs of disabled people and substantially increase the amount of subtitling during the license period.

The license for TV4 stipulates that big entertainment programmes and Swedish TV drama should be at least to the same extent accessible as in 1996 (110 hours of programming then; 312 hours of Swedish spoken programme time was subtitled in 2003). The license also states that activities in relation to accessibility shall be increased during the license period in so far as new technical improvements make this possible without increased costs.

There are no specific requirements for audio description, and this has so far been left to Swedish Radio (the licences for SVT (the public broadcaster), UR and SR say that they can share the responsibilities in this area). However, SVT’s license stipulates that the ambition should be to develop a system for reading out subtitles (for visually impaired people) during the period.

With regard to sign language, the SVT license stipulates that the focus of programming for the deaf should be primarily news, information and culture and that these should be translated into sign language; programmes for children and youth should also be prioritised.

There is now a proposal to update the Radio and TV law to include commercial TV broadcasting companies as well, and also to include requirements to provide more audio description for blind people. The proposal is under investigation.

Digital TV

Generally, there seems to be no special attention to accessibility in relation to digital TV in Sweden, though the system for reading out subtitles has recently been launched for digital TV.

Other initiatives

In relation to Digital TV, digital techniques are being used by companies to develop new and cheaper systems for subtitling and spoken subtitles – digitalisation is thus expected to bring improvements for disabled people.

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