With annual funding through the Platforms stream of $2.8m, Able provides a service vital to the estimated 70,000 vision-impaired and 700,000 hearing-impaired in New Zealand.
Captions are also useful to those with English as their second language, or if you watch TV in a noisy environment or with the sound off.
Broadcasters need to have the relevant technology to enable these services. Currently the services available are:
- Captions on TVNZ 1 news bulletins
- Captions on a wide range of programmes across TVNZ 1 and TVNZ 2
- Captions on a selection of programmes on Duke, Prime and Three
- Audio description on selected programmes on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ 2.
Currently On Demand content is not captioned.
All programmes funded by NZ On Air are captioned. Other priorities for captioning and audio description are decided by ABLE depending on audience feedback and demand.
You can find out which programmes are captioned and have audio description available on the Able website.
Able is run by the Media Access Charitable Trust which includes representatives of the vision and hearing impaired communities.