Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Beverley Milligan and I'm the executive director of Media Access Canada or MAC, a not-for-profit advocate for broadcast accessibility. With me is Yves Seguin, the project manager of MAC's descriptive video working group for French television.

Canadian Heritage committee  Data about the quality and quantity of accessibility will be available next spring, when we publish the first results from a one-year content analysis of programming made possible by the support of CTV, Industry Canada, and Ryerson University. The studies measuring the quantity a

Canadian Heritage committee  Vertical integration did not cause but can solve these problems, partly because production and distribution companies are merging and partly because these mergers create benefits for Canadian broadcasting. As you may know, the CRTC requires benefits from ownership changes. Table

Canadian Heritage committee  Certainly there is the cost issue, but relative to the system itself the costs are not large, and there are also solutions to bringing down costs. It requires technical innovation. It requires all kinds of things. The technology exists today; it has to be put together. That's why

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. I guess it's not necessarily a CRTC approach to 2040; it's that if they go at the same rate they're going now, that's when we'll finally get there. So that is the correct year, at the rate they're going now and are continuing with.

Canadian Heritage committee  What's interesting is that on the other side they don't record the closed captioning that is “brought to you in part by”. I don't know whether you are familiar with that particular piece of advertising. It was originally created to underwrite the costs associated with captioning.

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely not. The CRTC puts out a monitoring report. If you search that monitoring report, which is supposed to be a snapshot of broadcasting, the word accessibility doesn't exist in it, nor the word captioning, descriptive video—nothing exists in it. There's no empirical evide

Canadian Heritage committee  We have done some experimentation in live programming, as well. In fact, CTV broadcast Dancing with the Stars live, and it was just fabulous.

Canadian Heritage committee  We're beginning to get some statistics around television. It's virtually in all major movies. It is available on the DVD. However, at the cinema, persons with the disabilities are not necessarily going to be able to go to the cinema and enjoy that movie with their family. To put

Canadian Heritage committee  Hello, and thank you. Before I begin my prepared statement, I'd like to apologize on behalf of Yves Séguin, who is not joining me here today. He would have presented to you the consumer side of things. Having said that, I'd like to tell you that I am a child of deaf parents, an

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the key lesson and the one that's most in our face is that there was a comprehensive campaign and outreach, and there was recognition that there was economic disparity and that something needed to be done about that. It needed to be addressed and then communicated. I ag

Canadian Heritage committee  I think it's also important to recognize that in a market-driven framework there are always going to be those areas that are not going to be driven by the market. The government needs to step up and accept that and address that aspect in a very proactive way, certainly in this ci

Canadian Heritage committee  Your question speaks to a very important point, and that is the lack of research. I think that's consistent with many other activities that affect people with disabilities in communication. Again, there needs to be ongoing research in this and many other areas. We communicate re

Canadian Heritage committee  The first real issue, realistically, is whether it is $30 we're talking about. This is a situation of supply and demand. If nobody knows about it in the first place, on September 1 you're going to have lineups at electronics stores. They're not going to be $30--not at all. They'r

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll add the important point that if you want to use any of that spectrum they're squatting on, you have to partner with them. You're just not going to get that access, so how can anybody ever break into anything? How is there innovation, when you have to partner, inevitably, wit