Mexico. The Federal Institute of Telecommunications, IFT, issued the General Guidelines for Accessibility to the Broadcast Television Service, which will allow the hearing impaired population to consume, on equal terms with other people, the signals of commercial concessionaires that transmit broadcast television and that cover more than 50% of the national territory, as well as those of federal public entities that are concessionaires for public use of broadcast television.
The Guidelines establish the parameters that hidden subtitling and interpretation in Mexican Sign Language must follow to comply with the provisions of the Forty-Third Transitory Article of the Federal Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law (LFTyR), in the sense that the signals of the aforementioned concessionaires must have one of these accessibility services in the programming they transmit from 6:00 a.m. to 24:00 p.m., excluding advertising and other cases that the Institute provides for in the provision itself.
The definitions, characteristics and specifications that are made in the Guidelines seek to specify and give uniformity to the criteria that the concessionaires referred to will have to meet when offering the service of hidden subtitling or interpretation in Mexican Sign Language.
In the elaboration of these Guidelines, the Institute carried out an in-depth analysis of the international experience in the field, taking as a reference the cases of the United States, France, Australia, the United Kingdom, Spain, Argentina, among others; and a public consultation that allowed to strengthen the project that was approved by the IFT Plenary.
These Guidelines contemplate, among other aspects, the characteristics and visual elements that must be respected by the services of hidden subtitling and interpretation in Mexican Sign Language, as well as the symbology that will publicize the existence of said accessibility services.
Some of the features that the hidden subtitling service will have to comply with are:
- Coincide with the spoken words, in the same order as these, without substitutions or paraphrasing, except when necessary, in which case it must faithfully convey the meaning of what is spoken.
- Describe relevant non-narrative elements such as the manner and tone of the voices, as well as non-narrative and contextual information of the program.
- Maintain synchrony with spoken voices according to the characteristics of the voices.
- Be located at the bottom of the screen without obstructing the face and mouth of the people who appear on it, as well as other visual elements or information that are important.
- Distinguish speakers when there is more than one on the screen.
- The interpretation service in Mexican Sign Language must, among other parameters, be synchronized with the voices, within the material possibilities, so that the message is understandable and attached in its sense to the spoken.
These Guidelines guarantee that people with hearing disabilities have the necessary elements to consume, on equal terms with other people, the signals of commercial concessionaires that transmit broadcast television and that cover more than 50% of the national territory, as well as those of federal public entities that are concessionaires for public use of broadcast television, complying with the provisions of the LFTyR.
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