I&B Min announces implementation of accessibility standards for hearing-impaired TV audience

In a bid to make television programmes accessible to the hearing-impaired audience, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday announced that all news channels will carry a bulletin with sign language interpretation at least once a day.

He also said all channels as well as service providers will run one show per week with subtitles.

The Accessibility Standard for TV Programmes for persons with hearing impairment will be implemented from September 16, 2019, Javadekar said.

"DD News runs a news bulletin with sign language interpretation once a day and on similar lines we have requested other news channels to do so and they have agreed," he told reporters.

Javadekar announced that all news channels will carry a news bulletin with sign language interpretation at least once per day and all TV channels and service providers will run at least one programme per week with subtitles or captioning, an official statement said.

Live news, live and deferred live content or events such as sports, live music shows, award shows, live reality shows, live debates, scripted or unscripted reality shows, etc. and advertisements or teleshopping content have, however, been exempted, it said.

The policy will be reviewed after two years, it said.

The overall implementation of the standards will be done in phase-wise over the next five years, the statement said.

Javadekar also announced that Accessibility Standards for films for visually-impaired through provision of narration facility in between dialogues are also under examination.