Deaf News: NDCS urges Ofcom to take regulatory action over ‘unacceptable’ Channel 4 subtitling issues

Ofcom must act on a potential breach of the Communications Act by Channel 4 over its “persistent” subtitling issues, the National Deaf Children’s Society has told the regulator.

The charity’s letter to the organisation, sent on Thursday, describes the outage as having a “very direct and detrimental impact” on deaf young people. Issues with the broadcaster’s subtitling provision occurred following the triggering of a fire suppression system at Red Bee Media on 25 September.

The message from Mike Hobday, the charity’s executive director of policy and campaigns, reads: “It is already some 25 days since the index incident and we are fast approaching 1 November 2021, the date marking 37 days of no, or very little, subtitling being available.

“Broadly speaking, this would mean subtitling provision had been absent from Channel 4 for 10% of the year.”

Mr Hobday goes on to argue that the percentage of content without subtitles would mean the broadcaster is in breach of the Communications Act 2003. Under Section 303 of the legislation, “at least 90 per cent” of Channel 4’s programming should be “accompanied by subtitling”, with the exception of “excluded programmes”.

The same law also places a requirement on broadcasters to provide at least 10% of their programming with audio description and at least 5% with sign language interpretation – services from Channel 4 which have also been impacted by Red Bee Media’s outage.

Mr Hobday continued to say that the timeframe left NDCS “most alarmed” and that a “satisfactory resolution” is “long overdue”.

“Whilst we understand their concerns to ensure that work does not cause the channel to come off air again, you must appreciate that for young deaf viewers who rely on subtitles, their channels have been practically “off air” consistently for several weeks already.

“Their proposed timetable is simply unacceptable.

In a statement to The Limping Chicken in response to NDCS’ letter, an Ofcom spokesperson said the regulator shares the charity’s concern about these issues, which are “causing deep upset and frustration”.

“Channel 4 did not have strong backup measures in place, and it should not have taken several weeks to provide a clear, public plan and timeline for fixing the problems.

“We have met Channel 4 to express our concerns and ensure it meets its timings for restoring subtitles, signing and audio description. We will then consider any further action,” he said.

The Limping Chicken understands that Ofcom won’t be able to determine whether the 90% subtitling requirement will be met by Channel 4 until the end of the calendar year, which is when the quota period concludes.

While Ofcom did not comment on whether it would be taking regulatory action at this stage, the organisation is considering what steps may need to be taken to hold Channel 4 accountable.