Supreme Court’s direction on special news bulletins for the disabled is welcome, but a lot more needs to be done

Continued legal pressure and timely notification of accessibility standards are essential for meaningful progress in making media content accessible to all.

Many Indians will remember growing up watching DD News with a portion of the screen dedicated to sign language interpretation for the benefit of the country’s hearing-impaired population. Sadly, why and how this practice stopped, nobody knows. Against this backdrop, the Supreme Court’s recent request to the additional solicitor general, Aishwarya Bhati, to take instructions from public broadcaster Prasar Bharati, as to whether a special news broadcast for persons with visual and hearing impairment can be televised is a welcome development. This order was given in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a charitable trust called Sanket Foundation. In its PIL, the foundation sought directions that films and TV news should have subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing people and sign language interpretation. It particularly spotlighted the absence of such features in important public events, such as the Prime Minister’s Independence Day address to the nation.

The Supreme Court’s recent request to the additional solicitor general, Aishwarya Bhati, to take instructions from public broadcaster Prasar Bharati, as to whether a special news broadcast for persons with visual and hearing impairment can be televised is a welcome development. (Unsplash)

It is not clear what the SC precisely means by a “special news bulletin.” Perhaps what is meant is a news bulletin accompanied by accessibility features, namely audio description for the visually impaired and same language captioning/subtitling/sign language interpretation for the hearing impaired. While this is a welcome interim development, the ultimate effort has to be to ensure that all content is born accessible for persons with disabilities, obviating the need for any special interventions for them.

It is not as though this cannot be done. Pursuant to litigation instituted in the Delhi high court by some visually and hearing impaired persons, this year, movies such as Article 370, Shaitaan, Fighter and Laapataa Ladies were released with audio descriptions for the visually impaired, enabled through a mobile application on the smartphone of such persons. The ministry of information and broadcasting also released “Guidelines for Accessibility Standards in the Public Exhibition of Films in Cinema Theatres for Persons with Hearing and Visual Impairment” on March 15 this year, setting a phased timetable for all new movies to be accompanied by accessibility features.

That said, continued legal intervention is, unfortunately, not just helpful but is, in fact, imperative. Indeed, after the Delhi high court finally disposed of the aforesaid litigation, many producers stopped responding to email requests for their movies to be born with accessibility features, and the pace at which accessibility features were being incorporated into movies has also noticeably declined for both the visually and hearing impaired. Since the guidelines set a two-year time limit for all new films to be made “born accessible” (the cost of time and resources required to retrofit content for accessibility is eliminated), this has given producers an escape hatch to refuse to comply with requests for accessible films in the interim. Since the technology to embed accessibility features into movies already exists, it is unfortunate that producers are refusing to incorporate them into their movies and waiting for the deadlines set out in the guidelines to expire to incorporate such features. On August 8, the I&B ministry notified the establishment of a monitoring committee that is tasked with ensuring the robust implementation of these guidelines. The committee also has three credible voices from the disability rights committee and hopefully will help plug some of the current gaps.

For television channels, the picture is much worse. In 2019, the I&B ministry released the "Accessibility Standards for Television Programmes for Hearing Impaired" for public comment. The same exercise was repeated in 2021 but to date, the standards have not been notified. Practically speaking, until the standards are notified as part of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, 2017, they do not become the law of the land. Therefore, this means that a person with a disability cannot go to court to complain about noncompliance with these standards.

And noncompliance there has indeed been. As per the standards, all private and public broadcasters were to ensure that 50% of their content is accompanied by closed captioning and/or sign language interpretation by 2024. However, as research by the Billion Readers initiative shows, a very small portion of new TV content is actually “born accessible”. For persons with visual impairment, no accessibility standards for TV have as yet been formulated, much less notified.

Logistical challenges are often cited by private channels/broadcasters as the grounds for refusing to make content accessible. Illustratively, organisations such as the Indian Broadcasting Foundation noted in a recent consultation conducted by TRAI that making content accessible for PWDs leads to an increase in backend work which becomes especially challenging in a country like India which has diverse languages, dialects, and language scripts. In the context of TV news channels, the IBF stated that “News content presents special challenges to provide subtitling, especially in multiple languages. Most news items are cut life or within minutes of an event and there is no time to redo the content in multiple languages or provide subtitles.” It further noted that there is no space left for closed captions as TV screens in most news channels are filled with “scrolls and headlines.” The same argument was made by Yashraj Films in the Delhi HC. This school of thought ignores the fact that the principle of reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities necessarily entails going the extra mile for their inclusion. If there is one good reason why this must be done, that must outweigh 10 logistical challenges as to why it cannot be done.

Let us hope that DD can lead by example, pursuant to the Supreme Court’s intervention. It is important for courts to continue to play their role in sustaining the momentum because accessibility features are often not provided unless there is a strong legal mandate and the possibility of adverse consequences for the stakeholders involved. The I&B ministry should also seize the moment to take the requisite steps to notify the TV accessibility standards for the hearing impaired and to promptly formulate and notify such standards for the visually impaired. Only then will we be able to get to a paradigm where we do not just celebrate one special news bulletin per day but have accessibility by design across the board.

Rahul Bajaj is a practicing lawyer, co-founder, Mission Accessibility, senior associate fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and adjunct faculty, BML Munjal University School of Law. Vaishnavi Chaudhry is sensitisation and capacity building lead, Mission Accessibility. The views expressed are personal