SUBTITLING ON TV

Dr Amy Khor Lean Suan asked the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts since the question on signing and captioning of key programmes for the hearing impaired was posed last year and the then Acting Minister had replied that Singapore Broadcasting Authority would explore with broadcasters the possibility of providing the hearing impaired with subtitling of major Government speeches, how many programmes have been so subtitled and if more will be done.

Dr Lee Boon Yang: The Media Development Authority or MDA has explored with broadcasters, the possibility of providing subtitles for major Government speeches for the benefit of the hearing-impaired.

MDA has informed that to provide accurate subtitling of all important speeches by Government leaders, the broadcaster would need advance copies of the prepared text. However, prepared texts of important Government speeches that are aired 'live', such as the National Day Rally speech, are normally not ready until hours before actual delivery. In some cases the prepared text may not be available to broadcasters before the delivery of the speeches. Also, for `live' broadcasts such as the National Day Rally speech, it is difficult for accurate subtitling as actual delivery may include off-the-cuff remarks which differ somewhat from the prepared text itself.

MDA has also assessed that while it is not practicable for broadcasters to subtitle all important speeches, they should be able to provide selective subtitling. For a start, MediaCorp has agreed to provide subtitling for the English version of this year's National Day Message to cater to the needs of the hearing impaired.

I would also like to point out that there are other practical means for the hearing-impaired population to get news information. Channel NewsAsia (CNA) provides captions during its news bulletins, summarising key points from the news story that is being featured at that point in time. Summaries of the latest news are also available on CNA in the form of crawlers that run throughout the day. The information on these crawlers is updated regularly and includes breaking news. For the "live" coverage of the National Day Rally and Budget speeches, CNA also summarises the speeches through short captions.

In addition, the CNA website provides up to date information on newsworthy items. Hearing impaired viewers can also refer to short news write-ups on Teletext.

On MediaWorks channels, captions are provided at the end of the news bulletins on Channels i and U to summarise the main news items that were presented.

MDA will continue to explore ways in which information can be made more easily available to hearing impaired viewers.