Intersteno E-News 92

6 | ENEWS 92
synchronized media. This is only a formal review. However, digital accessibility is about access to
digital information and services for all. By supplementing this formal review with a (qualitative) review
by a customer panel of people with disabilities, fulfillment of the above mentioned ambition can be
brought closer.
Customer panel
As part of the development of the live subtitling service for parliament, the Parliamentary Reporting
Office (PRO) has previously attempted to set up an ad hoc customer panel for the deaf and hard of
hearing. Cooperation has been sought and found at, among others, a national based organization.
Practice shows that where the revenue is often large, it is not easy to organize, motivate and
(structurally) maintain such a customer panel.
This is why after discussions the PRO has chosen to organize the customer panel referred to here not
nationally but locally. Moreover, it was chosen not to do it ourselves, but to choose a local
organization for the disabled and having experience with customer panels.
Photo: A minister answers during question time. His words are subtitled live.
What is the revenue of a customer panel? An example: when checking the quality of live subtitles, the
quality officer always uses sound. The customer panel revealed that this is unusual. After all, the live
subtitles are aimed at the deaf and hard of hearing and not at the hearing. From now on, the quality of
the PRO is tested without sound. In this way, one can take on the role of a deaf or hearing impaired
person and determine whether the debate can be properly followed on the basis of the subtitles.
Another example: the PRO's live captionists are also PRO-reporters. They are trained to strive for
accuracy and completeness. In practice, when working as a captioner, this mainly produces many
subtitles, which, according to the technique, are shown briefly. This method, with a correspondingly
large amount of text, also leads to the problem that a lot of text lines have to be displayed. The
customer panel indicated that it is not feasible for a user of subtitles, a deaf or hearing impaired
person, to process so much text in such a short time. The panel opined that subtitles are not about
completeness but about accuracy. The subtitles must properly reflect, in a condensed form, the
content of the message. One of the members of the customer panel sees it as follows: I am deaf, but
not stupid.