Staff writer Pamela Stirling looks at a news programme specially designed for the hard of hearing.
“‘I’M THE MOUTH,’ says Janis McArdle, presenter of the Saturday News Review, the news programme with sub-titles for the 200,000 New Zealanders with impaired hearing.
One of the major considerations behind McArdle’s selection as presenter of News Review was the fact that deaf people find her easy to lip-read. “I don’t feel as though I’ve got rubber lips,” says McArdle. “And I don’t try to exaggerate my mouth movements on screen because there’s a danger you’ll turn off the hearing audience if you don’t look completely natural. But it’s very important that deaf people can see what you’re saying.
“Many of the television journalists in New Zealand have beards or moustaches and you just can’t see their lips at all. They’ll do a lovely piece of camera down the barrel without even stopping to consider that there are thousands of deaf people out there who have no way of knowing what they are saying.”
Working for News Review has made McArdle — who has worked as a television news journalist — more aware of the disadvantages of the “quick and snappy” style of regular news bulletins. “Everything on television is so slick. We should slow down the pace of news bulletins to give people a chance to assimilate and absorb the information. For example in News Review we have built-in pauses between the shot where the newsreader throws to the film item, the screening of that item, and the newsreader coming back up on screen and beginning a new subject. People who are deaf or hard of hearing need time to make that adjustment.”
The difficulties that deaf people have in dealing with rapid changes on screen have led to certain innovations in News Review, which are not features of the BBC programme on which it is based. Producer Paul France, who worked closely with deaf people in making these changes, explains why:
“For someone with normal hearing, listening to an item and absorbing it is a one-stop process. The information goes straight into your brain. But when you are either lip-reading or reading sub-titles, it becomes a double-handling process. You actually operate a second or two behind the pace of the programme because it takes you more time to adapt to changes in subject or location. And it’s very difficult to crash into the middle of a sentence if you’re lip-reading. We’re assuming that the same thing occurs when you’re reading sub-titles, so we’re building in pauses and providing a list of contents and shoulder-headings. We also have shorter sub-titles than the British programme. It took us a great deal of experimentation to decide upon the ideal combination of information and brevity.”
While deciding on the format for News Review, France examined the American system of using sign-language — the newsreader sits in the normal position but in a marked-off square in the top right-hand corner there are two hands going flippety-flip — but rejected it. “The trouble is that there are two systems of sign language currently in use in New Zealand so we decided to stick with base-line captioning instead,” he says.
New technology may one day mean that base-line captioning can be provided on all programmes, says France. Such captions would not be visible on an ordinary TV set, but with the use of a special adaptor, people with impaired hearing could pick up the sub-titles which would be broadcast on a free wavelength within the station’s television signal.
“The BBC are already experimenting with Ceefax (see facts) technology,” says France. “It’s a simple process in technological terms but it’s actually quite difficult to do. Just timing the captions to fit the shots takes a lot of time and effort. Right now, for instance, it takes us three hours to load an electronic Scribe generator with the 180 captions used in a 15-minute News Review programme.”
Both France and McArdle hope that News Review will increase awareness of deaf people’s difficulties. “To be blind, you have everyone’s immediate sympathy and help,” says France, “but if you’re deaf, it’s not apparent and not noticed. People just don’t realise the problems that impaired hearing can cause. Perhaps people with normal hearing should turn down the sound on their television sets some time and see what it’s like …”
NEWS REVIEW, Saturdays on TWO, 6.00pm.
