The accessibility of media services is a part of equality - now the subtitles of the Nelonen TV channel also fulfil the quality requirements
According to the Transport and Communications Agency Traficom, the quality of the subtitling service of the Nelonen TV channel fulfils the requirements imposed on it regarding adequate clarity and understandability. The duty of Traficom is to further the accessibility of media services by, among other things, supervising the quality of the subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing on the channels of the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE, as well as on the MTV3 and Nelonen channels.
Traficom received a review of the implementation of Nelonen’s subtitling service at the end of August 2023, after ordering Sanoma Media Finland Oy to fix the inadequacies in the subtitling service by 1 August 2023.
Sanoma Media Finland Oy has changed the process of its subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing so that all subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing produced by artificial intelligence will be checked and corrected with the help of human labour in those new programmes that the subtitling requirement applies to. Some of the most watched programmes are also subtitled completely manually and no programmes are subtitled by only using artificial intelligence anymore.
Traficom states, based on several programme samples seen, that the quality of subtitles is now at a sufficient level and the difference from before is significant. Subtitling summarises the speech and makes it more readable, and is therefore more understandable. Errors in the subtitles have been corrected and, among other things, proper names, numbers and words in foreign languages are now spelled correctly. Sentences are also separated by punctuation marks. According to Traficom, the quality of the subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing service of the Nelonen TV channel fulfils the requirements imposed on it regarding adequate clarity and understandability. The programmes with the new subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing can be watched both on the Nelonen channel's television broadcasts and on the Ruutu streaming service.
“High enough quality subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing enables hearing-impaired persons to watch TV-programmes. In addition, elderly and people learning the language also benefit from the subtitling”, Development Manager Tiina Aaltonen states.
Enquiries
Legal Counsel Eliisa Reenpää, tel. +358 29 539 0418, eliisa.reenpaa@traficom.fi
Tiina Aaltonen Development Manager, tel. +358 295 390 526, tiina.aaltonen@traficom.fi
Traficom’s web pages (External link) on the accessibility of audio-visual content
Background
Subtitles must be provided in the original language of the programme: in Finnish for Finnish-language programmes and in Swedish for Swedish-language programmes. The quality of subtitling services must be high enough to ensure that subtitles are sufficiently clear and easy to understand. The subtitling responsibility concerns the TV channels of YLE and the TV channels of MTV3 and Nelonen.
The Act on Electronic Communications Services was amended at the beginning of 2021 with respect to the provisions concerning programming accessible to people with a visual or hearing disability. The previous quantitative subtitling requirements were supplemented with a qualitative requirement.
Traficom issued guidelines on the accessibility of audio-visual content services on 1 October 2021. The guidelines present the minimum criteria that Traficom considers essential to high-quality subtitling.