Broadcasters ‘working together’ on emergency subtitles following Channel 4 outage, Sky says

Channel 4’s subtitles outage last year made broadcasters “stand up and think” and work together on support for deaf viewers, according to Sky’s head of access services.

In June, Ofcom concluded the channel had breached the conditions of its broadcast licence, after the triggering of “fire suppression systems” at Channel 4’s access provider Red Bee Media’s West London base last September took subtitling services offline.

Channel 4 said it was “very disappointed” by Ofcom’s finding and issued another apology for the disruption to its services.

Speaking at the annual conference for the National Association for Deafened People (NADP) on Saturday, Sky revealed broadcasters “are all working together now” on subtitling provisions during an emergency following the incident.

Asked what the company had learned from Channel 4’s outage, Sky’s Margaret Lazenby told The Limping Chicken’s Liam O’Dell: “The one thing we thought about was promos, or what’s the best way to get the message across?

“We’ve looked at our disaster recovery site to ensure that we can fall over, but I do know that all the channels and vendors are all working together now to find out the best possible way to deliver that message if there is an outage, and to keep that message updated at all times.”

The session also saw the Sky representatives announce a commitment to 100% subtitling on 26 of its channels by the end of the year, with the number currently standing at 24 channels.

The same target of 100% has also been set for video on demand (VOD), while subtitles for entertainment and movie programming in ultra HD will be enabled in the first quarter of 2023.

Ms Lazenby added: “I do think subtitling was always an afterthought when they were building technology, but now it’s at the forefront.

“It’s always part of the project at the very, very beginning, and Sky has invested millions in ensuring all of their platforms, going forward, if there’s subtitles on linear [TV], they will move over to VOD.

“So these 100% channels, those programmes will be available on VOD.”

Sky is the latest channel to pledge to 100% subtitles by the end of the year, after Channel 4 made a similar promise back in March.

Three months later, the broadcaster stressed it “remains committed” to “providing subtitles for all of the shows” on its All4 streaming services by December, despite receiving complaints that shows such as Taskmaster and The Uncivil War were still without captions.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.