Channel 4 - “Subtitles are now available on Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media and Digital Platforms”

On day 28 of Channel 4’s subtitling crisis, we’re pleased that Channel 4 have announced that their subtitling issues have been partly resolved. This should mean that most shows will now be available with subtitles on normal TV.

Channel 4 statement

Read the statement from Channel 4

What we’re doing

We will continue to monitor Channel 4 services to make sure that their promises are delivered in practice and that they continue to keep the deaf community updated.

This partial fix comes as a relief, following their last statement which said that subtitling problems could continue until mid-November. This would have meant that content broadcast by Channel 4 would have been inaccessible to our communities for over a month.

RNID has been fighting for the return of subtitles for deaf people and those with hearing loss.

We’ve been meeting regularly with Channel 4 to discuss the impact of the crisis on our communities, who have felt excluded from popular TV shows, including Gogglebox and Great British Bake Off.

We will continue to work with Channel 4 to help them rebuild trust with the deaf community, by prioritising accessibility in the future. We will also continue pushing to see the return of full access services, including signing, as quickly as possible.

Channel 4 – “full access services might not be available until the middle of November”

On day 25 of the continuing failure of subtitling, signing and audio description services, Channel 4 have confirmed that the crisis could continue until mid-November. This is because not only did the incident at Red Bee Media damage the equipment providing these services, but Channel 4’s own back-up systems also failed.

Our open letter to Channel 4 – fix your subtitling and keep deaf community informed!

As promised in our update yesterday, we continue to push on your behalf for the problems about subtitling to be resolved – particularly on Channel 4. The problem has already gone on for 20 days and this is unacceptable.

Subtitle It!

Demand broadcasters make their content accessible and for the Government to make subtitles a requirement on more services.

TV subtitling update: BBC and Channel 5 make progress to resuming a normal service, but little improvement on Channel 4

We wanted to share with you a new update on the subtitling issues which have affected the BBC, Channel 4, and Channel 5 over the last few weeks.

Channel 4 – “Subtitles are now available on Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media and Digital Platforms”