Design Proposal for Sign Language Services in TV Broadcasting from the Perspective of People Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Sign language services are provided so that people with hearing loss are not alienated from socially and politically important information through TV broadcasting. In this paper, we conducted a user survey and evaluation of the current sign language services for deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) people, and solutions were proposed for the problems found in the course of the analyses. To this end, a total of five stages of research were conducted. First, the communication problems experienced by DHH individuals and previous studies on their language and information acquisition were investigated. Second, the most typical types of information delivery channels via TV were defined as news, discussions, and weather reports, and by investigating the actual sign language service cases for each type, three visual information delivery elements were identified: sign language interpreters, reference videos, and subtitles. Third, a preference survey, an interview survey, and an eye tracker experiment on the DHH participants were conducted with varying arrangement options of information delivery elements. Fourth, based on the results of the investigations and experiments, the options to be considered when arranging information delivery elements were compiled. The results showed that the sign language interpreter, which is the first element of information delivery, should be presented in a size clearly visible because the visibility of their facial expressions is important. In addition, it is recommended to present the interpreter without a background since DHH participants did not prefer the presence of a background. As for subtitles, which is the third element of information delivery, it was confirmed that the provision of sign language interpretation and subtitles together helped DHH participants to understand the contents more quickly and accurately. Moreover, if there are multiple speakers, individual subtitles for each speaker should be provided so that the viewers can understand who is talking. Reference videos, which are mainly placed on the screen background, the second information delivery element, were considered less important to DHH participants compared to sign language interpreters and subtitles, and it was found that DHH participants preferred reference videos to be visually separated from sign language interpreters. Fifth, based on the overall results of the study, a screen layout design was proposed for each type of information delivery element for DHH people. Contrary to the general conception that there would be no problem in viewing information-delivering TV broadcasts by DHH people simply by placing a sign language interpreter on the screen, the results of this study confirmed that a more delicate screen layout design is necessary for DHH people. It is expected that this study will serve as a helpful guide in providing better sign language services for TV broadcasts that can be conveniently viewed by both DHH and non-disabled people.

Automatic TV Logo Identification for Advertisement Detection without Prior Data

Advertisements are often inserted in multimedia content, and this is particularly relevant in TV broadcasting as they have a key financial role. In this context, the flexible and efficient processing of TV content to identify advertisement segments is highly desirable as it can benefit different actors, including the broadcaster, the contracting company, and the end user. In this context, detecting the presence of the channel logo has been seen in the state-of-the-art as a good indicator. However, the difficulty of this challenging process increases as less prior data is available to help reduce uncertainty. As a result, the literature proposals that achieve the best results typically rely on prior knowledge or pre-existent databases. This paper proposes a flexible method for processing TV broadcasting content aiming at detecting channel logos, and consequently advertising segments, without using prior data about the channel or content. The final goal is to enable stream segmentation identifying advertisement slices. The proposed method was assessed over available state-of-the-art datasets as well as additional and more challenging stream captures. Results show that the proposed method surpasses the state-of-the-art.

Legal Regulation of Spreading Opinions and Beliefs through TV Broadcasting

The research is focused on the problems of legal regulation of spreading opinions and beliefs through TV broadcasting. The scientific novelty of the research consists of the provisions on the need to amend the legislation on establishing the procedure for inspection and monitoring of television organizations by the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting. The author has studied legislative acts regulating the activity of mass media and works of scholars, where the peculiarities of the legal status of television organizations are covered. It has been stated that the constitutional right to free expression of one’s opinions and beliefs can be exercised through TV broadcasting. The legal basis for the activities of television organizations has been determined. The legal principles for the activities of journalists of television organizations have been clarified. Forms of disseminating one’s own views through television have been established. It has been emphasized that the creation of one’s own television organization by a citizen or a legal entity is the first way to spread opinions and beliefs. The participation of well-known politicians or public figures in television programs has been recognized as a separate form of disseminating the relevant concepts to a wide audience. At the same time, broadcasting an interview given by a well-known public or political figure to the TV channel’s journalists is an important method of disseminating the relevant information. Legal restrictions on the dissemination of certain information by television have been defined. It has been stated that the right to information may be limited by law in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public morality. The general characteristics of monitoring and supervisory powers of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting have been provided. The author has formulated propositions for amending the current legislation regulating the activities of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting.

Subtitling as a Vector for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Patriotism

This paper is aimed at showing that subtitling can be used to foster bilingualism and patriotism in Cameroon. The objectives are to investigate how deeply rooted the practice of audiovisual translation is in local media outlets, focusing on how it can help in promoting bilingualism; promote the use of subtitling in the Cameroonian audiovisual media landscape; and assess the pivotal role of the audiovisual translator in this sector. A sample of 151 persons was used. Questionnaires were administered to respondents and stakeholders were interviewed in two media houses: Hi TV and CRTV. Hi TV is based in an English-speaking region, and CRTV is a State-owned media house and believed to have the widest audience in the country. Findings revealed that subtitling does not only provide TV viewers with information in their second official language, but also enables them to improve on their reading and writing skills, as well as their bilingualism, among others. Subtitling is not advanced in media houses in Cameroon. Recommendations were made to improve on the practice of subtitling in media houses in Cameroon. These include increasing the level of subtitled programmes broadcast on TV stations, raising awareness on the importance of media information access by the hearing impaired; creating an audiovisual translation unit in each TV broadcasting house and recruiting audiovisual translators; voting of laws to make the subtitling of some, if not, all TV programmes broadcast by Cameroonian TV channels mandatory; educating the public on the importance of subtitling by gradually introducing them to viewers through TV programmes, so that their eyes and mind could progressively get used to watching subtitled material and thus avoid total rejection of the subtitles; and training more audiovisual translators in Cameroon. Key words: Translation, Bilingualism, Patriotism, Vector, Subtitling