Thirteen TV channels will be monitored for how they met sign language and subtitling provisions for newscasts and other important broadcasts, as decided today by the Broadcasting Coordination Council (BCC) following a complaint from the Council for Preventing and Eliminating Discrimination, IPN reports.

BCC president Dinu Ciocan said the anti-discrimination Council found that people with hearing impairments had been deprived of the right to information and had had no access to political debates and other electoral broadcasts during the recent election season.

The monitoring will cover the channels Moldova 1, Prime, Publika TV, Canal 3, Canal 2, N4, TV 7, Pro TV Chisinau, Jurnal TV, Accent TV, Euro TV, RTR Moldova, and Ren TV Moldova.

The Broadcasting Code requires broadcasters to provide sign language interpreting or subtitling to at least one prime time newscast.

The monitoring, which will cover a period of 7 days starting from November 27, will also check how the channels respected the provisions for the required percentages of own content (as opposed to re-broadcast content) and of news and commentary content.