Television Captioning: Proposed recommendation to terminate complaints as adequately remedied

Television Captioning: Proposed
recommendation to terminate complaints as adequately remedied

Issued: 1 December 2000

Updated: 1 February January 2001

See now withdrawal of this proposal

See also submissions responding to this proposal:

• ABC television (MS Word document)
• Australian Association of the Deaf (MS Word
  document)
  
• Deafness Council of Western Australia (MS
  Word document)
• Deafness Forum of Australia

Further action to be announced shortly after considering submissions.

Captioning standards under the Broadcasting Services Act have now been
made. These standards take effect from 1 January 2001 and will require
licensees and national broadcasters to provide a captioning service for

• all television programs transmitted during prime viewing hours; and
• all television news programs, and television current affairs programs,
  transmitted at any time

except that for regional television broadcasts requirements regarding
unscripted speech on news programs are deferred until 31 December 2003.
These provisions also exclude advertising and sponsorship material.

As foreshadowed in my "Update on Inquiry on television
captioning complaints under Disability Discrimination Act", dated
and published 16 March 2000, I now propose to recommend to the President
of HREOC that she exercise her power to terminate these complaints under
section 46PH(1)(d) of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
Act, which provides for complaints to be terminated if another remedy
has been sought and the President is satisfied that the subject matter
of the complaint has been adequately dealt with.

As I stated in my earlier views, an adequate remedy for the purposes
of this decision is not necessarily a perfect, complete or final remedy.
A remedy can be, and in my view in this case is, "adequate" for present
and interim purposes although it is less than the state of affairs which
is desirable and may be required in the longer term.

I note again the comment by Acting Disability Discrimination Commissioner
Susan Halliday in her published decision regarding a complaint
concerning access to Summer Hill railway station in Sydney:

"I regard a complaint about a particular station as adequately remedied
by an acceptable overall rate of achievement of accessibility of stations,
whether or not the particular station is first on the list of stations
to be made accessible."

In this case, although these captioning standards provide for accessibility
only of programs of some types or at some times, and do not address some
of the programs with which the present complaints are concerned, I believe
the same principle should be applied, and that the complaints should be
regarded as adequately remedied by these standards.

My proposed recommendation at this point that the captioning standards
provide an adequate remedy does not mean that the same decision would
have to be made regarding other complaints in future. In particular:

• This recommended decision would have no applicability to complaints
  regarding subscription television services, which are not covered by
  the captioning standards under the Broadcasting Services Act.
• This recommended decision is that complaints made in 1999 are adequately
  remedied by measures to be taken by the start of 2001. Subsequent complaints
  seeking further measures to be implemented over a further period are
  not precluded, and would need to be considered on their merits unless
  the provider or providers concerned had applied for and received an
  applicable exemption under section 55 of the DDA.

Request for comments

Particularly in view of the lack of legislative provision, under the
arrangements brought into effect by the Human Rights Legislation Amendment
Act number 1, for a review procedure on termination decisions to replace
the former procedure whereby the President could be asked to review decisions
by Commissioners to decline complaints, I think it is desirable that an
opportunity to comment on a proposed termination decision be provided
in this matter before a decision is finally recommended or made. I consider
that a period of four weeks would ordinarily be appropriate for this purpose,
but in view of the time of year I am requesting responses by Monday
15 January 2001. Responses should be sent by email if possible to
disability@humanrights.gov.au but may
also be sent by mail to Disability Rights Unit, HREOC, GPO Box 5218, Sydney
1042.

In view of the broad implications of this matter and the public nature
of the inquiry conducted so far I am making this proposed recommendation
and request for comment available on the internet after providing it directly
to the representatives of the complainant.

GRAEME INNES AM

1 December 2000