The Association of the Deaf and INFONET Alliance request that the TV channels in Moldova should make sure the audiovisual media services are accessible to persons with hearing impairments. In a news conference at IPN, Natalia Babici, first vice president of the Association of the Deaf, said the persons with hearing impairments hear with the eyes. For the news bulletins and TV programs to be comprehensible to them, the TV channels should use sign language interpretation, subtitling and other contemporary techniques.
In specially dedicated news programs, the space on the screen intended for sign language interpretation should be increased from 1/9 to minimum 1/3 of the area. This window should no way be covered by another image, such as logos, signs, titles or infographics. The characters in titles should match the visual information on the screen and the audio information and should be easily readable. Natalia Babici said only Moldova 1, TVR and sometimes PROTV use sign language interpretation in Moldova.
Roman Lopatiuc, president of the Association of the Deaf of the Republic of Moldova, said the persons with hearing impairments complain that there is not enough compressible information on TV. The subtitles are written with small letters and cannot be easily seen, while the window intended for sign language interpretation is very small and cannot ensure the accessible transmission of the message. “They see deaf and mute films on screens. They cannot understand even what’s going on in Ukraine,” stated Roman Lopatiuc.
INFONET executive director Victor Koroli noted it is important for all the TV channels to interpret the news bulletins and TV programs in sign language, while the window intended for the interpreter should meet the generally accepted accessibility standards. The subtitles are of aid not to everyone. Not all the persons read sufficiently fast to fully read the information. The message remains unclear to those who do not know the language in which the subtitling is.
Twelve nongovernmental organizations from ten states – the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova – created a coalition with the aim of communicating, of transmitting good practices and knowledge of civil society experts from the Visegrad Group (V4) countries and the Eastern Partnership countries. The coalition focused its attention on the ensuring of access to information and audiovisual media services for persons with hearing and visual impairments. The acute necessity of such an approach appeared during the Covid-19 pandemic and required working out new communication strategies, new standards of access to information for disfavored groups in times of crisis.
The executive director of INFONET Alliance spoke about examples that can be followed in Moldova. In Romania, for example, the sign language interpreter is near the official who speaks in a news conference. In the Czech Republic, the window intended for the interpreter represents 1/3 of the size of the screen.
In the Republic of Moldova, there are about 5,000 persons with hearing impairments and 2,500 of them are members of the Association of the Deaf.
Note: IPN News Agency gives the right of reply to persons who consider they were touched by the news items produced based on statements of the organizers of the given news conference, including by facilitating the organization of another news conference in similar conditions.
