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The Accessible Channel (TAC) launched across Canada on December 3 to coincide with the United Nations International Day for Persons with Disabilities. It is for Canadians with hearing and visual disabilities and will feature closed captioned and descriptive audio programming from major Canadian and American broadcasters.
TAC aims to reach 6.6 million homes in its first year. Profits will go to the Media Access Trust, which gives money to organizations devoted to enabling access to media by people with perceptual disabilities.
This is the first time that Canadians who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind and vision-impaired have accessed TV services on a channel specifically for them. The channel will be offered as a mandatory service as part of the basic digital package provided by broadcasting distributors.
Programming on TAC will be broadcast in all genres and will be acquired from CTVglobemedia, CanWest Global, CBC, Rogers, CityTV, CBC, the National Film Board, Audio Vision Canada, and British and American TV programs distributed by independent producers.
Sixty percent of the programming must be Canadian, and the channel has also committed to air about four hours for French-language programming per week.
The open described video feature on The Accessible Channel uses news readers in seven locations across Canada and can be accessed through Newsworld's secondary audio programming (SAP). With this channel, the open described video soundtrack in the primary audio setting of millions of TV sets with digital cable access across Canada is permanently in place.
TAC chair Orvill Parkes says, " 'the Accessible Channel will make broadcasting history allowing millions of visual impaired Canadians to be included in everything that was and is television.' "
2001 data from Statistics Canada found that 610,950 Canadians identify themselves as legally blind. With our aging population, this number is expected to rise to 700,000 by 2010 and 828,000 by 2020.
Source: Tech Media Reports, 12/11/2008
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