Deaf people "often give up watching the news"

Sunday, 16 December 2018 11:44

By Sam Sterrett and Daniel Clark, local democracy reporter

Video: Students want sign language on local bulletins

Subtitles on television news appear too quickly, are often spelt wrong, and have information missing - according to teenagers at Exeter Deaf Academy.

Students at the school on Topsham Road, which is moving to Exmouth in 2020, have made a sign-language presentation to councillors - asking for their support in getting the BBC and ITV to sign local news and improve subtitling. They invited councillors to watch TV news without sound to understand what it is like to be deaf.

Currently in the UK, live regional TV news programmes do not have live British Sign Language interpretation, and subtitles and closed captioning don’t offer much help for British Sign Language users when English is not their first language.

Subtitles are not in real time, meaning that deaf audiences can find it challenging to follow news stories in the same way as hearing audiences.

Last Thursday, the School Council from Exeter Deaf Academy delivered a presentation in sign language to councillors, articulating the need for regional TV news programmes to be accessible for all.

Maryam Kamran, 16, vice-chairman of the student council, said: “The subtitles we see on live news are often not of a very high standard. Words are misspelled, information missed off and they’re quite often delayed.”

Co-Secretary Nissi Phinehas, 15, added: “Lots of deaf people struggle to understand subtitles because they are too quick… There’s also the additional problem we have in that we’re not reading them in our first language.”

Student council co-secretary Tom Bowden said that they have been writing to the Government, but as they were ‘busy sorting out Brexit’, they chose to campaign locally instead.

Councillor Alistair Dewhirst, who's a governor at the school's put forward a Devon County Council motion to encourage the broadcasters to improve their service for deaf viewers. He sys: “I am proud to support these fine young people and their desire to be kept in the loop by our local news broadcasters. I am incredibly aware that when these youngsters came into the council chamber and before the interpreter was signing for them, they had no idea what was going on. I am asking for the council to support these young people in asking BBC and ITV to have interpretation for the news so they know what is going on in the world.”

Deaf people "often give up watching the news"

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