%0 Journal Article
%T Monitoring Accessibility Services in Digital Television
%A Francisco Utray
%A Mercedes de Castro
%A Lourdes Moreno
%A Bel¨Śn Ruiz-Mezcua
%J International Journal of Digital Multimedia Broadcasting
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/294219
%X This paper addresses methodology and tools applied to the monitoring of accessibility services in digital television at a time when the principles of accessibility and design are being considered in all new audiovisual media communication services. The main objective of this research is to measure the quality and quantity of existing accessibility services offered by digital terrestrial television (DTT). The preliminary results, presented here, offer the development of a prototype for automatic monitoring and a methodology for obtaining quality measurements, along with the conclusions drawn by initial studies carried out in Spain. The recent approval of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities gives special relevance to this research because it provides valuable guidelines to help set the priorities to improve services currently available to users. 1. Introduction The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted on 13 December 2006 by the UN General Assembly, is an important milestone for technological developments related to people with disabilities. Article 6 of this convention establishes that To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, states parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems. The UN Convention thus recognises the right of people with disabilities to access communication and cultural information. As a supporting instrument, the G3ict initiative defines and maintains an index of accessibility and digital inclusion, which provides a measure of the degree to which countries meet the requirements for providing accessibility to information and communication technologies (ICT). Worldwide, this situation has led to new legislation to enforce the provision of accessibility. As far as accessibility to television is concerned, the different laws focus on subtitling, audio description, sign language interpretation, and accessible interactive services; these aspects will be addressed below. Television operators are among the entities affected by these service requirements. Governments in many countries have taken initiatives to promote and regulate accessibility services to multimedia television contents. This is the case in Spain [1, 2], UK [3], France, Italy, Germany, and other countries in Europe [4]. Current regulations establish
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijdmb/2012/294219/