KEY TELEVISION PROGRAMMES (Signing and captioning)

Dr Amy Khor Lean Suan asked the Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts whether he will consider requiring local television broadcasters to provide signing or captioning of important programmes, such as the news or the Prime Minister's National Day Rally speech, for the benefit of the hearing-impaired as signing is provided, for instance, in television news programme in Malaysia.

The Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts (Mr David T. E. Lim): Sir, it is important that key programmes, such as the Prime Minister's National Day Rally speech, reach as many Singaporeans as possible. For the hearing-impaired, the full text of the English speech and translations of key points of the Mandarin and Malay speeches are available on MITA's website.

However, there are practical difficulties in implementing Dr Khor's suggestion for signing and captioning. Broadcasters have considered such requests in the past, but felt it was not feasible due to lack of a regular pool of "sign" interpreters for `live' translations. Close captioning, an alternative system used in the US, UK and Australia, works by means of captions hidden in the video signal, to be recalled by viewers when needed. However, this concept has to be further studied, as it requires substantial high costs.

Currently, broadcasters do, during `live' telecast of important speeches, provide summaries of main points made during the speech. CNA also provides news headlines in the form of "crawlers" throughout the day on its news programmes.

MITA, therefore, does not make it mandatory for broadcasters to provide signing or captioning of TV programmes. However, SBA will further explore with broadcasters the possibility of providing the hearing-impaired with subtitles during major Government speeches.

Ms Braema Mathiaparanam (Nominated Member): Sir, the Minister mentioned about cost. Is it possible to know how costly this service would be? On the point about the lack of resources, there are a lot of signing classes that go on, especially through the YMCA, and people are certified. How does the Minister see this problem?

Mr David Lim: Mr Speaker, Sir, the costs, at best, are estimates at this point in time. MediaCorp had estimated previously that the cost of setting up a close caption system is about $250,000. But, more importantly, they also estimated that the annual operating cost of a close caption system could be close to $300,000. It is a fairly substantial cost, and it is a question then of costs and benefits.

On the question of the shortage of signing personnel, the problem actually is a little bit deeper, and that is because there is not just one signing method. In the schools in Singapore, they teach something which is called "signing exact English", and that is a word for word signing. This is a fairly slow process because if everybody speaks at the rate I do now, one could keep up with word for word signing. But not everybody speaks at a very slow rate. So, this could present a difficulty. Many hearing-impaired people also adopt more of their own simplified signing, which captures the gist of the ideas. So, when we talk about a pool of people to do simultaneous translations, so to speak, into sign, we do not just require a person who can do exact word signing, but we also need somebody who understands the subject matter, is able to think on the spot, and can quickly capture the essence of the message and translate it. That is difficult. We do not have a lot of people that we can call on.

Dr Amy Khor Lean Suan (Hong Kah): Sir, knowing the difficulties of providing signing for important programmes for the hearing-impaired, has the Ministry asked the broadcasters for the cost of providing at least sub-titling, if not close captioning for such important programmes? I would also like to ask the Minister to comment on the fact that as the Government does provide funds for public service broadcasts - in the case of MediaCorp, to the tune of some $80 million a year - is it not possible for the broadcasters to provide at least sub-titling for some programmes? The Ministry could consider providing some funds to the broadcasters to provide such services for important programmes like daily news, documentaries and educational programmes. Many of the hearing-impaired have equal intellectual capacity as their hearing peers, and they would be able to understand the full extent of the programmes, and watch such programmes with their families.

Mr Speaker: Dr Amy Khor, no speeches. Ask your questions, please.

Dr Amy Khor Lean Suan: I am sorry. I would like to inform the Minister that it was unfortunate that there was no sub-titling in the programme, "Changing Lives" that was shown on Channel NewsAsia in April 2002, which featured Ms Erica Levi. She is a well-known role model for the hearing-impaired community. The hearing-impaired could actually not get the full flow of the programme because there was not even subtitling for that programme.

Mr David Lim: Sir, Dr Khor's question is whether we could consider sub-titling. We have said that we would explore this. But sub-titling means that it is no longer signing. It is put into a form that is in a regular language, so to speak. If you are then talking about reading it off the television screen, you might also want to consider, in terms of the cost-effectiveness, whether it is not more practical to read it off the newspapers or the Internet. But notwithstanding that, we would consider whether for important speeches, we can have more sub-titling. Sub-titling can sometimes disturb other viewers. Also, we can only sub-title, at most, in one language, and we have got to decide which language we want to sub-title in. If we want to be able to reach to all the hearing-impaired, and we have got four official languages that we want to sub-title in, then we would see nothing else on the screen.

Dr Amy Khor Lean Suan: Sir, as most of the important programmes are broadcast in English, like the Prime Minister's National Day Rally speech, would it be all right to provide sub-titling in English? That is the feedback I have got from the hearing-impaired community. In addition, I would also like him to comment on what he said in Parliament yesterday that images and pictures on the television screen conjure very powerful messages. Together with the sub-titling, the hearing-impaired would have the full impact and implication of the speeches made.

Mr David Lim: Sir, I am very gratified that somebody listened to me yesterday. We said that we would consider. I would take up her suggestion.

Ms Braema Mathiaparanam: Sir, coming back to the hearing-impaired and signing, I appreciate what the Minister has said about the signing differences. How would the Minister account for Malaysia having signing over their news? Is there something to be learnt there?

Mr David Lim: Sir, I am not familiar with which particular method of signing the Malaysians use over their news. But I am sure that there is something to be learnt there.