| CBC has to caption every second of its broadcasts on CBC Television and Newsworld... | A deaf person, Henry Vlug, filed a human-rights complaint about missing and inadequate captioning – and won. Starting in November 2002, CBC claimed to comply with that decision by captioning everything on CBC TV and Newsworld |
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| ...but they aren’t captioning everything | For three years, I watched CBC and took notes. I found well over a hundred cases where captioning was missing or inadequate |
| I published my results, which seemed to be taken seriously | In November 2005, I published my findings. The Canadian Human Rights Commission forwarded my findings to CBC, which eventually sent me two letters in response |
| CBC conceded all my points about missing captioning... | CBC agreed that all the kinds of captioning errors I found had happened or could have happened, and claimed to be tightening up its procedures. |
| ...but CBC sounded defensive and angry on other points | CBC claimed that subtitled movies don’t need to be captioned (even though sound effects are never subtitled), that scrollup captioning was just fine for dramas and comedies, and that real-time captioning really could be used for programs that aren’t live. And they angrily defended themselves, using terms like disagree strenuously and dispute... vehemently |
| Then the Human Rights Commission tried to scuttle the case | My lawyer used the word “complaint” in a letter to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which seized on it and made it sound like there was never a complaint in process and I’d have to file one from scratch. Basically, the Human Rights Commission tried to cancel its own investigation |
| And CBC captioning hasn’t really improved | None of the different kinds of captioning errors and omissions I found have been rectified. Nothing has been completely fixed. (I’m still taking notes, and now I publish my results regularly) |
| If CBC can’t maintain 100% accessibility, who can? | If a public broadcaster cannot maintain a legal requirement to provide 100% captioning, what hope do we have for 100% captioning anywhere? Why would private broadcasters, who will do anything to save a penny, put in any extra effort to attain 100% captioning? What hope do we have for audio description for the blind on most, or all, programming? |