Accessible services
The era of electronic communication and the Information Society will, it is promised, bring universal benefits to all who wish to participate. If this is to happen, the products must be deliverable to - and accessible by - all of those people, without discrimination or barriers. That will require careful planning and analysis by service providers, to ensure that their offerings are genuinely accessible. The term 'accessibility' is used with so many shades of meaning that it is easier to set out the broad principle than to interpret it in practice, and the issue is further complicated as technology develops and so do the expectations of users.
For the purposes of this paper, the term 'accessibility' will be used in the context of the availability of electronic communication services to people who have disabilities of a physical or sensory kind. Many of the people with these disabilities will be elderly, since loss of hearing, vision and dexterity are frequent accompaniments to old age, but others will be very young. Across the group as a whole, there will be just as much youthful eagerness to communicate and to acquire information as in any other cross-section of the population. Other interpretations of 'accessibility' may arise in relation to the content of transmitted material, because of intellectual, cultural or linguistic boundaries, and the whole area will form part of OFCOM's remit. The regulator may be placed in the position of deciding what is necessary and what is reasonable in these contexts. At the limits there are the legal constraints of discrimination legislation, but case law as established in the courts must inevitably lag behind when technologies are fast moving, so it is the regulator who will be in the forefront.
A user with no vision cannot see television, one with no hearing cannot perceive the sound, but neither is necessarily excluded from enjoyment of this type of medium. Audio description and subtitling provide means by which these people can follow the programmes, but the technical availability of these facilities is just the starting point. A cinema audience watching a foreign language film which is subtitled are all participating in the same experience. Apart perhaps from a few who are fluent in the language, the whole of the audience needs the subtitles and puts up with the interference to the visual field as a necessary consequence. Those who prefer not to do so must find a cinema showing a dubbed version. This is not the case when television programmes are subtitled for the benefit of deaf and hard of hearing viewers, or an audio description of the action is transmitted for those who are blind. If accessibility for some is not to mean inconvenience for most, the facility must be available separately, on demand. This means separation of the service, running through all the levels of content provision, transmission and reception.
Although accessibility features of this kind are primarily linked with programme content, the action of maintaining separation adds to the costs at every level and it therefore poses the difficult question of where those costs should fall. It will not be the same answer in each instance and the regulator should be prepared and able to address these issues sensitively and fairly. It has, for example, been considered reasonable to argue for the very considerable costs of assembling the material for subtitles or audio description to be absorbed as an overhead of programme making. On the same basis, the expenses of the transmission network provision may be bundled up in the costs charged to the broadcasters for carrying their programmes. What then of the terminal equipment? If the accessibility features are not separated, but are transmitted as an integral part of each programme, they will be displayed on a standard receiver and the disabled viewer - or listener - is treated just as anyone else. If the features are separated, special receivers become necessary, usually at additional cost. Is it then discriminatory to expect disabled people to pay extra sums for their broadcast receivers, or should the provision be subsidised, and if so, how?
Television subtitling provides a good example. In order to receive subtitles on analogue television, a teletext receiver is required. It used to be the case that many people chose to have teletext and to pay the additional cost for the receiving set. When the manufacturers decided that it made commercial sense to put teletext facilities into all their mainstream products - because it was cheaper to do that than to offer the option - the problem went away. Prior to that stage, there was the impossible question of who should carry the costs of facilities which are essential for some, but merely desirable for others. This kind of problem worsens as the added facilities become more specialised and more expensive, and the regulator will be unable to avoid involvement in situations such as this.
In fact, the regulator is already deeply involved. Existing requirements on broadcasters, repeated in the draft Communications Bill, set out quotas to be achieved for features such as subtitling, audio description and sign language translation, without specifying whether or not these facilities are to be separated. Where the quotas are small, the programmes can be transmitted at night and recorded by viewers, although whether this is itself a form of discrimination is a matter of debate. With large quotas - 80% or more in the case of subtitling - transmission cannot be confined to unsocial hours and there is a direct choice between annoying the majority of viewers with intrusive captions or transmitting the subtitles separately. For most programmes the subtitles are sent separately, in a closed format to be displayed only on demand. In analogue television broadcasting the Teletext service is used for this, but digital broadcasting has other arrangements. Reception of separated accessibility facilities in digital broadcasting therefore hinges on the receiver specification or, in the transition period, on that of the 'set-top box'.
The regulator's role in relation to receiving equipment is extremely limited, because the receiver market is de-regulated. Specifications for digital broadcast receivers are set through European Standards organisations and OFCOM will have a responsibility to engage in this work. However, the primary purpose of standards is to facilitate trade and it is therefore most unlikely that any published standard will make added features essential rather than optional. What is, and is not, included in the products offered in the market-place will depend upon the purchasing habits demonstrated by consumers, just as happened with the analogue television receivers and Teletext. There will be many who are quick to point out the inconsistency of having accessibility built in to the content provision and transmission levels of broadcasting, only to be negated if the necessary receivers should prove to be either unavailable or unaffordable. Should this situation arise, a possible answer may lie within an expanded concept of universal service. Citing market failure to deliver the means of accessing a basic service could provide a justification for intervention and subsidy. However, this is a complex issue which a newly established regulator may not have the will or the resources to tackle in the early stages of a new era in broadcasting. The parallel case of accessible terminals for telecommunications is as yet unresolved, but the experience gained from exploring this particular problem can perhaps be carried across to the broadcasting sector. Nevertheless, a better solution for all parties would be to ensure that the technical standards for all the facilities mentioned fit within the basic performance specification of the digital services.
In broadcasting and in telecommunications, the terminal is the key to network access. Without a suitable radio or television receiver, or an appropriate telephone instrument, use of the service is impossible. For users who are disabled, the descriptions 'suitable' and 'appropriate' take on a particular significance. The terminal has to be appropriate to the user's requirements as well as to the network's specification; otherwise it is of limited use. Broadcasters are not expected to supply receiving sets and anyone who wants one buys it or rents it from a shop. It was a different matter with telephones which were, until de-regulation, supplied by the network operator and the needs of disabled users were usually catered for. In consequence, disabled telephone users who now find that they cannot obtain the equipment that they need, or have to pay high prices for niche market devices, complain with good reason that de-regulation has effectively discriminated against them.
European and National legislators have placed a duty upon the regulators to be watchful over the interests of disabled and disadvantaged users and this will certainly apply to OFCOM. There is little scope for the regulator to influence the design of telephone terminals, because this area is now extensively de-regulated, but there is some room to ensure that accessible and affordable terminals are available. Their provision, if the market does not deliver it, could be brought within the scope of universal service if the regulator is so minded. It would take a very big step indeed to apply this principle to broadcast receivers as well as telephone terminals, and OFCOM would no doubt prefer to see the European standards for digital broadcast networks and receivers drafted in a way that delivers accessibility without the need for special terminals.
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