Following Love Film / Amazon’s commitment to subtitling their online video content, subtitle campaigners are turning their attention to Sky TV once again. Sky TV will be the only remaining provider out of the big three in the UK, including Netflix, not to provide subtitles on their online or on demand content.
Netflix have provided subtitles since losing a court battle in the United States and Amazon Prime, which took over Love Film, revealed they would follow suit after comedian Mark Thomas slapped embarrassing signs above the front door at Amazon’s London HQ earlier this month – that followed a popular online petition.
Earlier this year we reported how deaf teenager Jamie Danjoux from Newcastle launched his own online petition against Sky – the number of signatories on that petition has swelled to over 2,300 – and last night campaigners converged on Sky’s Facebook page after a customer posted a complaint.
Sky offers subtitles across many of their channels, including flagship channels Sky1 and Sky News. Subtitles are also available on the Sky Movie channels and on many Sky Sports channels too. Many other broadcasters on the platform, such as kids channel Nickelodeon, provide subtitles but many also do not.
Notable exceptions include the SyFy channel. SyFy have come under criticism for removing subtitles from shows that are available to download illegally with subtitles included. Apparently even pirates care about accessibility.
The Sky+ TV recording system will also automatically record subtitles if they were broadcast but the amount of programming that must be subtitled by any channel as it is broadcast is determined by Ofcom regulations and is proportionate to the share of viewers that the channel has – so there is no legal requirement for many of the channels available on Sky to subtitle their content.
However, the biggest source of frustrations about Sky do not come from the content that is broadcast but the content available on their heavily advertised On Demand and Sky Go platforms – none of which are subtitled.
Sky say they are working on the problem – but in recent responses have been been light on the detail and seen by deaf people as part of a fobbing-off exercise. Past reasons given by Sky have centred around issues of disc space available to store subtitles on the Sky receiver boxes, rather than the actual capability of the system.
That excuse was given short shrift by some campaigners as subtitle files are said to take up a tiny amount of memory in comparison to the many HD films Sky boxes can store. Until more information is released by Sky about what the technical issues really are and an idea of the time it will take to resolve them, it is likely that the pressure on them will grow and grow as paying deaf customers feel increasing frustration about their exclusion from Sky’s innovations. You can sign Jamie Danjoux’s petition here.
What you’re saying on social media
@LC_AndyP @sky @Limping_Chicken don’t understand why they won’t? They will get even more customers keen to sign up! #moreprofit
— Daniel Hogan (@Cheekidaniel) May 29, 2014
@Cheekidaniel @Limping_Chicken @LC_AndyP @sky 1 hour film in HD will take up about 4GB or so,and the subtitle file can be as small as 500kb!
— Tony Sutton (@tony_sutton) May 29, 2014
In other developments, there was some good subtitle news delivered yesterday. BBC iPlayer now supports subtitles on downloads on the Android and iOS platforms.
We now have subtitles enabled on downloads for BBC iPlayer on iOS and Android. Yay! #subtitles #BBC #Accessibility pic.twitter.com/2B0JEIcePV
— Henny (@iheni) May 28, 2014
And, for when the subtitles don’t work so well, BBC’s See hear will have a special on the Horror of online Subtitles in a couple of weeks.
Keep an eye out for my piece for @BBCSeeHear on 11th June, BBC2 at 10.30am where I rant about online subtitles… pic.twitter.com/ZQC3OSREaL
— Samuel Dore (@Bursteardrum) May 28, 2014
By Andy Palmer, Deputy Editor.
Andy is Chairman of the Peterborough and District Deaf Children’s Society and teaches sign language in primary schools. Contact him on twitter @LC_AndyP
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splottdadrants
May 29, 2014
Virgin Media don’t provide subtitles on their On demand platform (which includes ALL terrestrial TV channels who do) or for their Film service. Are you chasing them too?
staciijaiime
May 29, 2014
I have virgin and about 75% of the channels don’t have subtitles !
Vicky Sadler
May 29, 2014
We’ll have to get onto that one!
Jules
May 29, 2014
Oh yes. I found that out only after I had already signed up and wanted to rent a film. Think they should be next..
TrickyT
May 29, 2014
Much of apple I tunes streamed films do not have captioning. It’s a big problem I missed a film called Inside Llewyn Davis when it was on at the cinema as captioned screening are at such inaccessible times also they are far and few between. It’s not captioned on I tunes now..it’s a new release . The only way for me watch it is to go out and buy the DVD with CC. It’s poor equlity and access all this content as good practise should have captioning. Also cinema has to understand that we need more access as it’s not inclusive for many deaf people. My big problem is hearing people making these choices of what to caption for deaf people. They should caption everything.
Pam
May 29, 2014
Join the global Caption Everything campaign which aims to bring all current campaigns together, to give them a louder voice. Feel free to add the Caption Everything logo to your website or blog, to show your support. The official launch will be in London in the summer, joined by Marlee Matlin’s Billion Words March campaign.
http://www.captioneverything.org
Michelle
May 29, 2014
As a member of the Love Subtitles Facebook campaign and team, after the success of Amazon it was decided to focus next on Sky as they have probably a bigger audience nationwide. The petition was already set up online, so it was a matter of spreading awareness about it. There has been some work going on in the background with a conversation between Sky and ourselves. Rest assured we are not resting on our laurels!!
What Vickys post on Facebook has done has continued to keep this public and also demonstrate that it affects more than just a few people.
Please please keep sharing the petition link and continue to tweet, post email and even live chat with Sky – just let them know how much we value subtitles.
As for Virgin Media, I am not aware of any petition already set up – can anyone advise if this is the case to avoid duplication?
Ruth
January 21, 2015
iTunes in the US has cc on most of their movies but the UK store does not on the same movies?!!! Completely ridiculous.
Liz Jordan
April 20, 2016
Now 2016 and still Sky ignores us. 😔