The UK Government’s Mid-Term Review of the BBC includes a commitment to grant Ofcom regulatory powers over the broadcaster’s social media content on sites such as YouTube, potentially ending the laughable practice of marking its own homework when it comes to online accessibility.
Unlike the BBC’s radio, TV and on-demand content (as its staff were all too happy to point out in response to an earlier complaint) materials shared on platforms such as Instagram are not overseen by the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, meaning when it comes to my #BringBackCaptions campaign, I have to complain to the BBC directly and hope they make the unconscionable step of admitting they’ve been discriminating against disabled licence fee payers for several months.
This could soon change, however, thanks to new reforms detailed in the UK Government’s Mid-Term Review of the BBC’s 2017-2027 Royal Charter, published earlier this week.
In particular, paragraphs 111 to 113 (inclusive) read: “We do think changes are necessary to Ofcom’s responsibilities to reflect that audiences increasingly consume news and other content online. We are therefore committed to giving Ofcom the same regulatory responsibilities for specific BBC online material as it currently has for the BBC’s broadcast/iPlayer content.
“Now is the right time to extend Ofcom’s responsibilities. The difference between broadcast content and online content is reducing over time and is starting to look increasingly small given the BBC is planning to create content that can be used across its platforms under its ‘digital-first’ strategy.
“We will, in collaboration with Ofcom and the BBC, introduce this recommendation through changes to the Framework Agreement. Ofcom will be required to apply the same principles of the Broadcasting Code in a new code for BBC online public service material, adapted to reflect the specific characteristics of online material.”
The document goes on to add that the “precise scope” is to be confirmed, but the government intents to include “BBC online public service material that is targeted at UK audiences and over which the BBC has editorial control, including where that is on a third party platform”.
It continues: “This means including in scope: BBC online activities such as material on the BBC news website; and BBC public service branded and editorially controlled material on a third party website, third party application or third party online interface (e.g. YouTube, other video sharing platforms or any website which is not within the bbc.co.uk domain).”
Granted, the existing Broadcast Code does not have a section on accessibility (that’s the separate Code on Television Access Services – which, by the way, should be incorporated into the eventual new code for the BBC’s online content), but it does emphasise under section five the need for “due accuracy” – something which is consistently undermined by BBC News relying on software which is highly inaccurate with typos, omissions and mis-transcriptions.
And so, the BBC now faces an ultimatum with respect to my campaign: they either save themselves from embarrassment and Bring Back Captions now, or expect an Ofcom complaint to be filed at the earliest opportunity.
Your move, BBC…
Bring Back Captions is Liam O’Dell’s campaign to have BBC News and BBC News UK return to manually captioning their social media content, after they suddenly stopped producing accessible videos in early 2023 in favour of relying upon Instagram’s automatic captions, which often contain errors and consistently fail to appear altogether.
Readers can support the campaign by signing Liam’s Change.org petition, and filing their own complaint on the BBC’s website.
Liam O'Dell 