The universal accessibility of deaf people to television in Spain. The pending subject of Sign Language in audiovisual regulation

Abstract

Despite the fact that television, due to its eminently visual nature, is the means of communication that meets the best conditions for accessibility for deaf people through sign language, as a visual-gestural and natural language for deaf people However, it has been one of the pending issues in the accessibility of deaf people in society.

Fundamental rights protected in a reinforced manner by the Constitution, such as art. 20, which refers to the right to information, art. 23, to participation, art. 27, as a right to education, as well as art. 10, as a right to dignity, have not been sufficient to guarantee the right of deaf people to access daily information in sign language, within the programming offered by television in our country.

More recently, the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by the Spanish State in 2008, and mandatory within the Spanish legal system, also failed to subvert the order of things, in terms of accessibility in the language of signs inside televisions.

In fact, the current Law, Law 7/2010, of March 31, which currently regulates the Spanish audiovisual panorama, grants a minimum of two hours per week in sign language. Let’s imagine for a moment if society as a whole had access to television programs in their language, just two hours a week.

This lack of access under equal conditions to information in sign language suffered by deaf people does not seem to be greatly altered by the entry into the Cortes Generales of a bill sent by the Government of the Nation, and, in whose text, it contemplates a minimum of five hours per week in sign language within the programming of private televisions, and a minimum of fifteen hours per week, within public televisions.

Although it is evident, the small progress in terms of number of hours per week, the legal reflection lies, not so much in quantitative analysis, but in aspects related to the concept of human dignity, and its defense from art. 10 of the Magna Carta.