[Initial Reaction] The Right of Hearing and Visually Impaired People to Enjoy 'Woo Young-woo'

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Hye-seon] "As the screen brightened, the face of a teenage boy, Younghyun, who had his eyes closed, appeared. Younghyun opens his eyes and, as if he cannot hear well, sticks out his right ear. A teenage girl, Seohye, smiles."

Recently, I happened to watch the barrier-free version of the movie Finding Sound on YouTube. Unlike the original film, it included audio descriptions explaining the visuals, as well as information about the speakers, dialogues, music, and sounds. Barrier-free refers to a movement aimed at creating a society where socially vulnerable groups such as people with disabilities or the elderly can live free from physical, institutional, and psychological barriers without inconvenience. Barrier-free content typically includes audio descriptions for the visually impaired and Korean subtitles for the hearing impaired, with closed captions that represent all sounds occurring in the content?from the speaker’s dialogue to music and sound effects?in text form.

In the United States, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act mandates closed captions on TV and online video service (OTT) content that include not only dialogue but also sound information and speaker identification. The United Kingdom also enforces a policy requiring subtitles on 80% of TV and OTT content. Global OTT providers headquartered in the US and Europe guarantee broadcast accessibility for people with disabilities. Netflix offers closed captions that display all sounds in every piece of content. For original productions, it also supports audio descriptions (AD) for the visually impaired and text-to-speech (TTS) technology.

What about South Korea? Domestic OTT platforms like TVING and Wavve have made insufficient efforts regarding accessibility for people with disabilities compared to the market’s growth. The OTT market size, which was 108.5 billion KRW in 2012, exceeded 1 trillion KRW last year. So far, Korean OTTs have only partially introduced Korean subtitles rather than closed captions. Only recently, since last year, has there been a trend toward adopting closed captions. TVING offers about 1,500 episodes with subtitles applied. Watcha currently supports around 240 Korean-subtitled contents. Wavve provides 34 subtitle services for the hearing impaired.

The National Assembly Legislative Research Office also addressed this issue in its 2022 National Audit Issue Analysis report. The report stated, "Among major OTTs, Netflix is the most proactive in providing barrier-free content, while domestic OTTs are insufficient in offering barrier-free services and accessibility for people with disabilities," and analyzed that "there is a need for support aligned with changes in the new media environment to increase media accessibility for marginalized groups and secure universal viewing rights."

Domestic OTTs also have their excuses. Struggling with deficits every year, they must focus on profitability. Producing subtitles for all content on domestic OTTs would require investments of hundreds of billions of KRW. There are also copyright issues. For licensed content, subtitles cannot be used permanently because they are provided under fixed contract periods. This is why subtitles are mainly supported for original series. If the programming of barrier-free content increases, subscription fees are likely to rise.

The government’s role is crucial at this point. Although the government enacted the Notification on Guaranteeing Broadcasting Accessibility for People with Disabilities, Including Programming and Provision of Disabled Broadcasting for TV broadcasting in 2012, there are still no regulations for OTT. The Korea Communications Commission announced plans to gradually mandate closed captions, audio descriptions, and sign language on OTT platforms by 2025, but there are calls to accelerate this process. On the 16th, the Korea Communications Commission held the first-ever International OTT Forum to support domestic OTT providers’ overseas expansion and establish global cooperation frameworks. Effective policies are needed for marginalized groups and for the globalization of OTT.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.