'Not good enough': Wellington teenager petitions Parliament to make captions mandatory

Tuesday, 13 September 2022

Student activist Hope Cotton has created a petition requesting media companies use closed captions on videos. To activate English closed captions on this video, click the CC button on the video toolbar.

A Wellington teenager has submitted a petition to make captions mandatory on TV and media videos, saying the lack of accessible media is “not good enough”.

For Hope Cotton, who is Deaf, mandatory captions would mean she would be able to reach her potential – and Aotearoa is behind other countries like Australia, the UK, Canada and the US in this area.

“We need this in order to be able to access education, important news and entertainment,” the 17-year-old said.

Growing up, communication was a barrier to making friends and being in large groups.

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Wellington teenager Hope Cotton, right, hands over her petition to Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick to make closed captions mandatory on media videos.

And despite being very academic, Hope would fall behind on school work during lockdowns because the video call functions didn’t have captions.

She said other people’s assumptions about her and her Deafness also caused barriers.

“People assume that if you wear hearing aids, your hearing is 100% perfect, but it’s not.”

She said some teachers would also have a go at her for not listening in class.

For Hope Cotton, who is Deaf, mandatory captions would mean she would be able to reach her potential.

“Because I can speak reasonably well, they just assume that I’m fine. But I’m not, I don’t understand what’s going on.”

She’s now learning New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) which has opened up a whole world of language and a community.

Learning NZSL had been like lifting a weight off her shoulders she didn’t know existed, Hope said.

She realised there was another way to communicate “that didn’t feel like you were walking through jelly”.

“For me, it’s a cultural thing, it’s something I have an affinity with, and it helps me connect with a community and, honestly, it’s just so much easier to communicate with.”

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Being an active member of the Deaf community has also led her into advocacy. Now she wants to advocate on behalf of others, which is how her petition to get mandatory captions on media videos came about.

On Tuesday afternoon, Hope Cotton handed over the petition with more than 2000 signatures to Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick.

“This is not good enough. Something needs to change,” Hope said.

“Ideally, it would result in legislative change which I think is really important.”

On Tuesday afternoon, she handed over the petition with more than 2000 signatures to Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick.

Dan Buckingham is the chief executive of media accessibility company Able.

Green Party spokesperson for disability issues Jan Logie said she absolutely supported mandatory captioning in the media and on television.

“I think it’s part of creating an inclusive society and there’s a significant proportion of people who struggle with their hearing or who want to access their media without the sound on or who may have English as a second language, and it helps in all of those situations,” she said.

Logie said making captions mandatory would modernise media to meet the needs of the community.

Dan Buckingham, chief executive of captioning and audio description provider Able, said broadcasters were already in a good place when it came to captions and gave the example that TVNZ2 has 100% captions.

However, it was more of a challenge for broadcasters to make their digital platforms accessible to host captions.

“Hope and Able ultimately come from the same place, we want to see more media accessible,” he said. “But Able’s point of view is that it’s more nuanced than a one-liner of ‘it must be captioned’.”

He said the current workflow model to provide captions was set up well for broadcast media, but inconsistent for online platforms.

Buckingham said there was a shift of audiences for digital, and the functionality of online platforms needed to be increased and workflows needed to change.

“If there’s suddenly an onus on broadcasters that they must caption everything, then it would be at the cost of other things – such as production of local content.”

He said if making captions mandatory wasn’t planned out well, there was also a risk of reducing the quality of captions if the work was outsourced to overseas companies.

That would lose the localisation of things like te reo and slang that was specific to New Zealand, he said.

“What we see as a good way forward is that the current model works well now because Able is a neutral provider that works across all broadcasters,” he said. “What needs to change and what we’d like to see is broadcasters must be able to carry the accessible services across all their platforms.”

In the meantime, Hope is looking forward to the day she can be fully included, just like anyone else.

“I’m sick of sitting around the TV on family movie nights and not knowing what is going on.”