99.9 percent of programmes are accessibility compliant
At its weekly session, the Media Council of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH) has approved the results of the latest assessment report on the accessibility of television programmes, which showed that 99.9 percent of the transmission time within the scope of the Act has been made accessible by service providers. The Council carried out the formal examination of tenders submitted for frequencies in Budaörs and Pécs and has approved the draft text of the call for tenders for the Törökszentmiklós 96.4 MHz local, community frequency.
The accessibility of television programmes continues to show a 99.9 percent compliance
The Media Council adopted and published on its website the NMHH’s assessment as to how and to what extent the seven national public service channels and the two major commercial channels made their programmes accessible to hearing-impaired viewers in the first half of 2019. During the over five thousand programme hours reviewed, nearly 83 percent of the programmes offered were accessible to the hearing-impaired – with 86.9 percent for public service channels and 68.7 percent in the case of commercial channels. The service providers again covered 99.9 percent of the transmission time required to be made accessible, yet anomalies seem to persist in subtitling, including the complete lack of subtitles or inaccuracies in terms of content. The vast majority—99.7 percent—of service providers continued to use subtitles while the proportion of programmes—0.3 percent—with sign language interpretation was still negligible. Based on the assessment, there is still room for improvement in the quality of the subtitles for live programmes, as the summarization used in such cases can often hinder the comprehension of the content. The Media Act requires all public service announcements, political advertisements, news programmes (including traffic news, sports news and weather forecasts), as well as political information programmes, programmes about people with disabilities and equal opportunities, films, game shows and programmes with public service purposes to be made audibly accessible.
Decisions concerning radio tenders
Following the formal examination of the bids received in the tender procedure for the commercial use of the Budaörs 104.8 MHz local frequency, the Council registered Hunicom Stúdió Kft., whilst in the tendering procedure for the community use of the regional Pécs 94.6 MHz frequency, it called on both bidders, Karc FM Média Kft. and FM 4 Rádió Kft., to remedy deficiencies of their submissions. The Board has approved the draft invitation to tender for the commercial use of the Törökszentmiklós 96.4 MHz local radio frequency, which has been published on its website.
The full agenda of the Media Council’s weekly sessions can be found on the Board’s website, along with the minutes of the meetings and all decisions taken; the latest decisions will be published after the necessary validation and administration period.