Brief to Joint Monitoring Committee

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• Brief to Joint Monitoring Committee
• 20 June 2008

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Contents

• Introduction
• SABC strategy Overview
• Regulatory Framework
• SABC Strategy on Disability
• Overview of community for disabled
• Current approach to sign language and subtitling
• Challenges
• Future Considerations
• Conclusion

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Introduction

• The SABC welcomes the opportunity to brief the
  Joint Monitoring Committee about the use of sign
  language in its broadcasting services
• SABC is South Africas public Broadcaster
• It is reorganised into two operational divisions,
  public service and commercial service division as
  required by the Broadcasting Act of 1999, as
  amended
• The public service division is comprised of
  fifteen radio stations and two full spectrum
  multilingual television channels
• The commercial division is comprised of three
  radio stations, one licensed television channel
  and one satellite television service

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SABC Vision
Corporate Goals

• Organisational Values
• Conversations Partnerships
• Building a Common Future
• Restoring Human Dignity

• Strategic Pillars
• People
• Operations
• Funding
• Technology
• Governance

Total Citizen Empowerment
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CORPORATE GOALS

• Content
• Ensure the SABC promotes democracy, non-racism,
  nation building, and empowerment through, news,
  current affairs and innovative programming that
  is informative, educational and entertainment in
  all official languages
• 2. Ensure the SABC produces compelling,
  professional and authoritative news, current
  affairs and other programming that tells the
  South African and African story accurately,
  fairly and in balanced way to all South Africans
  in line with its Editorial policies and
  regulations of ICASA
• 3. Ensure that the SABC reflects the World,
  in particular Africa, in line with its editorial
  policies and corporate goals, and plays a
  meaningful role in the supporting the African
  Renaissance and NEPAD

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CORPORATE GOALS

• Stakeholders
• Create an SABC that enjoys the support and
  respect of its viewers, listeners, shareholder as
  well as other stakeholders.
• Financial
• Create a financially sound corporation built on a
  sustainable business model, and ensure that its
  assets are used in an effective and efficient
  way. Establish a procurement policy that complies
  with the ICT Black Empowerment Charter, and
  promotes ownership and the participation of
  youth, women and disabled in the broadcasting
  industry
• People
• Make the SABC a place of preferred employment by
  attracting, retaining and nurturing talent in the
  Corporation and the country, while ensuring
  appropriate compliance with the Employment Equity
• Monitor, evaluate and reward performance on the
  implementation of the SABC Corporate Goals and
  Editorial policies.

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CORPORATE GOALS

• Technology
• 7. Put in place an innovative technology
  platform and infrastructure that will enable the
  SABC to deliver on its mandate
• Governance
• 8. Ensure full statutory compliance of the SABC
  with the Broadcasting Act, the Charter, Editorial
  policies and other relevant legislation. Put in
  place systems, policies and procedures, and
  systems to ensure improved business processes,
  achieve efficiencies and good governance of the
  Corporation.
• Performance monitoring
• 9. Monitor, evaluate and reward performance on
  the implementation of the SABC Corporate Goals
  and Editorial policies.

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Regulatory Framework

• The SABC has previously interfaced with ICASA in
  developing regulatory framework for broadcasters
  to provide for people with disabilities
• The SABC is a signatory to the Code of Good
  Practice developed in 2006
• The Code came through an extensive consultative
  and representative process that sought to
  encourage rather than prescribe measures to be
  taken by broadcasters in catering for people with
  disabilities
• In November 2007 the code was revised when ICASA
  further published regulations providing a Code
  for the communications industry on people with
  disabilities as required by the Electronic
  Communications Act (ECA) of 2005.
• The SABCs licence conditions issued by ICASA
  prescribe that the television channels should
  provide sign language and that all services
  should cater for people with disabilities
• The Code and the licence conditions requires that
  the SABC reports to ICASA annually on how it
  provides for people with disabilities
• The SABCs editorial policies also caters for
  people with disabilities

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Regulatory Framework - cont

• SABC Licence Conditions provides
• Clause 2.8 Programming for people with
  disabilities
• The licensee shall, in the provision of licensed,
  ensure that
• Schedule C, Clause 2.8 states that reasonable
  provision is made for sign language translation
  to be provided during news bulletins transmitted
  in prime time and during other programme genres
  broadcast throughout the broadcast period
• People with disabilities regularly feature and
  participate in its programme material in
  accordance with the Integrated National
  Disability Strategy.

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Regulatory Framework - cont

• Code on People with Disabilities issued Nov 2007
  by ICASA
• The Code provides for basic standards and options
  for improving
• accessibility such as improving and/or increase
  subtitles and sign
• language
• Broadcasters must ensure that the broadcasting
  content does not stereotype people with
  disabilities by amongst others consulting with
  organisations that represent people with
  disabilities
• Involve people with disabilities in the sourcing
  content ideas and in studios.
• Broadcasters are required to report to ICASA
  annually on progress regarding implementation of
  the Code.

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SABC Strategy on Disability

• The SABC has developed a disability strategy
  aimed to address the following
• To use the SABC platforms to raise awareness and
  education of Sign Language which will
• Integrate and build the hearing impaired
  community as an integral part of the Global South
  African Village this reducing feelings of
  alienation
• Inform, education, and target able bodied hearing
  population on the needs to the hearing impaired
  thus contributing to closing the divide between
  the two groups
• Aim to provide services that are more accessible
  to people living with disabilities in line with
  the Corporations vision of Broadcasting for
  total citizen empowerment and to ensure the
  integration of SABC employees with disabilities
  into the workplace in an equitable manner
• To expose and redress the historic and systematic
  inequalities and injustices of groups and
  individuals, disadvantaged on the grounds of
  among others, disability
• To eliminate disability discrimination in the
  service offering of the SABC through the creation
  of non-discriminative environment

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Strategy on Disability - Cont

• In order to ensure the participation of people
  with disabilities, the strategy propose amongst
  others
• In house sensitisation workshops for able bodied
  staff (the said workshops have already
  commenced)
• Exploring the possibility Job Rotation for
  persons with disabilities
• Using SABC multi-media platforms to raise
  awareness on challenges faced by persons with
  disabilities Radio, Television, Mobile, Web,
  etc
• Collaborate strategically with other media owners
  on joint initiatives
• Collaborate strategically in the exploitation of
  other mediums Magazine, Press, Billboard,
  In-House material)
• Involving Organisations that work with people
  with disabilities at all levels
• Adopt a holistic and integrated approach towards
  people with disabilities within the SABC

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Overview of disability community

• Its difficult to get reliable figures on the
  size of the disability community in South Africa.
  
• People with hearing impaired
• Statistics SA (2001) estimates that there are 313
  585 profoundly Deaf people and approximately 1
  237 264 extremely hard of hearing people in SA
• DEAFSA put this figure at 3.5 of SA population
• People with Sight impaired
• Statistics SA estimates about 600 000 blind
  people (80 of whom live in rural areas)
• It is further estimated that 40 of these people
  is blind and rest partially sighted
• SANCB feels the figure is around 2.5 million

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Current approaches to Subtitling and Sign
language

• Subtitling seems to be the best tool for
  increasing access to television.
• Since the inception of SABC Content Enterprises,
  the amount of subtitled programmes has increased
  dramatically over the past 3 years across all 3
  TV channels particularly the public service
  channels. On prime time in the last 3 years there
  has been an increase of around 50 of programmes
  with subtitles (mainly drama, entertainment and
  factual programme)
• During this time, the SABC has managed to build a
  culture in which viewers have got used to
  subtitles as a means of accessing programmes for
  deaf people as well as viewers who speak
  different indigenous languages.

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Current approaches to Subtitling and Sign
language

• The SABC provides interlingual and intralingual
  subtitles.
• Interlingual translation the translation of
  dialogue from one language into another in order
  to make films and television programmes
  accessible to speakers of the target language
  and
• Intralingual translation, in which subtitles in
  the same language are added, mainly for use by
  Deaf and hard of hearing people. Additional
  information (such as speaker identification,
  sound effects) is used to enhance the experience
  for members of deaf people and hard of hearing
  community.
• Currently there are no guidelines regarding
  subtitling.

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Current Approaches - Cont

• Sign Language
• The SABC channels broadcast events of national
  importance such as parliamentary events in South
  African Sign Language
• Until recently television channels provided
  signage for news bulletins as an interim measure
  to the discussions held as described below
• There are ongoing discussions between the SABCs
  News division and DEAFSA to improve on the
  quality of sign language interpretation broadcast
  during news
• The exercise is amongst others intended to have
  personnel that is highly trained and understands
  the source language of the bulletins as well as
  South African Sign Language

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Challenges

• South African Sign Language is mostly accessible
  to the educated and literate Deaf people as a
  result some of the uneducated and illiterate Deaf
  people create their own colloquial language
• Quality and standards
• Some groups comprising of deaf people feel the
  quality of SASL is poor
• The Broadcasting Industry needs agreed standards
  and practices
• Need engagement with hearing impaired people
  across different race groups
• Skills and capacity to produce content
• Most deaf people are currently educated in
  English within hearing impaired learning
  institutions and are unable to read subtitles in
  an African language
• Partial subtitling is perceived as discriminating
  against Deaf viewers as it only subtitles the
  dialogue in African languages
• ICASA does not currently credit subtitling like
  it does with other languages in terms of the
  license conditions and mandatory requirements

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Future Considerations

• The SABC is currently exploring what the benefits
  of DTT would be for people with disabilities
• In DTT subtitling will enable other languages in
  relevant genres and programmes
• However a revised editorial policy needs to be
  established once DTT is enabled
• DTT can offer more sign language and more closed
  captioning (on/off audience selection of
  subtitling options)
• DTT offers the possibility of a separate audio
  track with some programmes
• Hearing and visually impaired will be able to
  view options on the EGP (Electronic Programme
  Guide)
• There is a consideration to extend subtitling to
  a wider range of genres e.g. documentaries
• Possibility of working with Radio and TV Sport to
  improve sports commentaries for access by Blind,
  partially sighted and hearing impaired people
• Possibility of subtitling at live events
  especially those of national importance e.g The
  State of the Nation Presidential address

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Future Considerations - cont

• Help Produce guidelines for the broadcasting
  industry as there is none at the moment
• Audio Description
• The SABC considers the use of audio-visual
  description to assist the blind and visually
  impaired people
• Audio description is
• a descriptive narration of key visual elements in
  a video or television.
• allows Blind and visually impaired people to
  access content by listening to the audio
• narrators typically describe actions, gestures,
  scene changes, and other visual information
• may also carry descriptions of body language,
  facial expression, scenery, action, and costumes
  - anything that is important to conveying the
  plot of the story, event or image.

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Future Considerations - cont

• Educate able bodied viewers by exploiting other
  platforms like Radio on bridging the
  communication gap between them and impaired
  persons
• Utilising platforms and seeking alternative
  approaches such as like late night Matric
  Revision to teach and educate any interested
  persons in Sign Language and communication with
  the deaf
• Educate able bodied viewers and cater for
  impaired viewers by building where possible story
  lines and plots in certain local genres (e.g.
  Drama) that involve the lifestyle and positive
  refection of hearing and visually impaired
  persons
• This can prove a challenge as the commissioning
  cycles are long (in some cases 2 years) however
  SABC can start building this into their editorial
  policies
• Train the industry in the field of audio visual
  translation particularly in subtitling, audio
  description and South African Sign Language as
  there is currently a skills shortage.

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Future Considerations - cont

• SABC has observed that there is an interest in
  using African language subtitles and will explore
  the possibility. This will especially work in a
  DTT environment.
• The SABC is concluding a research study that will
  assist the SABC on its audio visual translation
  (AVT) strategies for television with particular
  focus on subtitling, dubbing, SASL and Audio
  Description.
• SABC is currently conducting an in-depth
  quantitative and qualitative language survey to
• To refresh the SABC language mandate
• To update and refine language policies
• To track previous language surveys
• The survey includes all SA official and marginal
  languages including sign language

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Conclusion

• The SABC would like to thank the committee for
  the opportunity to share information
• As guided by its vision for Total Citizen
  Empowerment, the SABC is committed to assist and
  putting resources for people with disabilities.
• We hope that the advent of DTT will enhance the
  public broadcasters capacity to deliver to
  People with Disabilities

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• Thank You