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MuTra 2006 – Audiovisual Translation Scenarios: Conference Proceedings Juan Francisco López Vera In the past decades we have seen a structural transformation of the European population: The aged population in Europe is growing fast and is predicted to grow steadily each year. Media and broadcasting have tried to adapt to these changes and audio description (AD) is a good example of this trend. AD is not only attractive for those who are visually impaired, be it by birth, aging or as a result of a loss of their visual capacity during the course of their lives, but also to those who are unable to see a film due to a temporary problem situation. This means that we do not face a homogeneous public: some of the target viewers will have visual memory, some will not, some will be able to distinguish shadows, others will not. It is, therefore, impossible to create an AD adapted to all the different needs of this heterogeneous audience. 2 Audio description: Origins and legal framework Audio description is a reality in the U.S. which is the country with a largest production of media programs for TV and cinema, etc. Audio description originates in the US, Canada and UK. In all of these countries AD began with live and open special play performances, moving to recorded AD for films to be sent internally to members of associations. This trend became soon public and professional: AD entered digital television (DTV) and commercial DVDs. With the Telecommunication Act of 1996, the US Congress instructed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to require video program distributors (cable operators, broadcasters, satellite distributors and other multi- channel video programming distributors) to phase in closed captioning into their television programs. In 1997, the Federal Communications Commission implemented rules to provide a transition schedule for video program distributors to follow when providing more captioned programming. The rules require that distributors provide an increasing amount of captioned programs according to a set schedule. Captioning has promoted the development of audio description. Audio description – which in some countries is not commercially available yet – will become a legal requirement for European media broadcasting once the European “Media for All” directives are enforced in all European countries. Media accessibility – closed captioning and audio description – is yet to become a reality, but with the future shift from analog to digital TV, it will obviously be a new market trend. A new industry will thus be created to cater for the new accessibility needs. When or how these European directives will be implemented is not defined yet. It may be by sanctioning laws – as those in the U.S or UK 4 - or by incentive or reward, like granting tax deduction schemes to broadcasters, or it may come in the form of a prerequisite for a digital license. It may be introduced progressively as DTV technology becomes increasingly available, which will play a major role in society and will open up services to all citizens. Access to the many services offered by DTV will have to be accessible to all citizens at many levels. AD can experience greater flexibility and higher quality in the new technology. For many years universal media accessibility has already become a major topic in many European directives and actions, such as the “Television without Frontiers” directive. This directive was adopted on October 3 rd , 1989 by the Council and amended in June 1997 by the European Parliament and the Council Directive 97/36/EC. It is the European legal version of the US Telecommunication Act of 1996. Since that date, i.e. for almost a decade, much work has been done in this respect and CENELEC 5 is now the institution in charge of Media Accessibility in Europe. 4 Communications Act 2003 5 http://www.cenelec.org/Cenelec/CENELEC+in+action/Horizontal+areas/ICT/e-Accessibility +and+TV+for+All.htm 150
MuTra 2006 – Audiovisual Translation Scenarios: Conference Proceedings Juan Francisco López Vera After the Athens Conference in 2003, the European Union drew up some general guidelines for those countries which had not yet developed a national plan of accessibility. In Spain, the First Accessibility Plan “Design for all” 2004-2012, was adopted on June 3 rd 2003, the European Year of People with Disabilities, and the interest of lawmakers and the profession of audio describers was so excited about it, there was already a fixed norm on how to audio-describe. The aforementioned Standard UNE 153020 of 2005, published by the Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification AENOR, was passed on 26 th January 2005. A working group of Representatives of the National Association for the Blind (ONCE), broadcasters, representatives of companies and universities was created and coordinated by the Spanish Ministry of Labor. The main beneficiaries of the law are companies and professionals making audiovisual material accessible for those with sight impairments, but it also serves as a reference for the creation of AD scripts. In November 2005, the Framework Agreement for the creation of the Spanish Center for Subtitling and Audio description (CESyA) was signed by the Real Patronato sobre Discapacidad 6 , the CERMI (the Spanish Confederation of representatives of the disabled) 7 and the University, Carlos III of Madrid. One of the aims of this publicinstitution is to promote SDHH subtitling and AD for disabled people and, in general, to encourage all mechanisms that favor accessibility in the Spanish audiovisual scene (Orero and Utray: 2005). To provide a broader picture to the raeder it may be interesting to mention that TV broadcasting of closed commercial audio description (that is to say, only for those who want to listen) began on the Andalusian TV channel, Canal Sur, on February 22 nd , 1995. It was broadcast until the end of 1996 and some 76 films were aired. This was the first experience with AD in Spain, but up to now, audio described programs on Spanish TV have been rather irregularly presented. In the UK and the US, the number of audio described hours required by the regulator is considerably below that required for subtitling. And, the forthcoming regulation in Spain will not change this trend. According to the White Paper of the Spanish Ley General del Audiovisual (Audiovisual General Law), the state owned channels will have to audio describe just 10% of the programs in 2015, whereas 100% of the aired programs must be subtitled in the same year. Whatever the system used in any European country, once DTV has become a common service (in Spain DTV is officially operating since November 30, 2005), media accessibility will be a reality, and two important issues will influence its development: cost and time. It must be mentioned though that the industry will not be able to comply with all these laws and norms because there are not enough experts and professionals available to implement them. This raises a new question: who will be doing the audio descriptions? 3 Cost of the implementation of AD The economic and operative implications of media accessibility do not follow traditional economic parameters. Cost in media production has already reached its limits: the use and abuse of advertisements as a way to pay for private broadcasting is taxing on the viewer. In 6 i.e. the Real Council of Disabilities, an autonomous organization of the General State Administration dependent on the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs which among other functions promotes the prevention of deficiencies, and promotes rehabilitation and social inclusion as well as equal opportunities. 7 CERMI (Spanish Confederation of representatives of the disabled) is the representative umbrella organization for all the Spanish Associations of People with disabilities. 151
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