This week, my father confirmed with Rogers that they were not passing through the DVS signal on an American station where it was available, despite Roger’s commitment to already having done so in a public forum with the CRTC.
For those who are not familiar with DVS, the Described Video Service is an extra audio track that describes the visual elements of a broadcast in real time to supplement the standard audio track in order for the show to be understood when watching as a person with vision loss or who is blind. Without this audio track much of the action & items on the screen are missed. This material is already available with the original broadcast but not being passed through from the source to rogers customers
From Rogers: “You are absolutely correct that Rogers committed to passing through DVS on
the digitized versions of the U.S. channels.
This was something that had been discussed internally when Rogers first
began configuring our digital signals to support a second audio stream for
described video.
Over the course of the past year, we were focused on supporting those
Canadian programming services that have formal DVS programming commitments.
The list provided to you reflects the full range of Canadian services for
which Rogers passes through DVS on digital.
With the exception of PBS, which you had noted, it has been our experience
that the U.S. television stations offer little, if any, DVS programming.
Our Engineering team has confirmed that WPBS Watertown has a DVS audio
stream. This stream has now been properly configured to pass-through along
with the main WPBS signal. It can be activated by selecting the SPANISH
audio setting (or by using the single-button feature on your current
remote). Our customer service information will be updated to reflect this
change. Unfortunately, the pass-through of the DVS audio stream for the
four commercial U.S. television stations requires extensive network changes.
These changes are required not only to pass-through DVS, but also to ensure
that we can continue to perform signal substitutions for Canadian
broadcasters offering identical programming.
The same issue doesn’t apply to WPBS because it is commercial-free. Given
the complexity associated with upgrading our equipment, we hope to be able
to pass-through any DVS on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX by early 2010, where
available from the Broadcaster.
That said, we have been in touch with these stations and they advise that
the amount of DVS they offer today is either minimal or non-existent. ”
So essentially, to save a few bucks and a little work they have not been passing through all the DVS programming available. Thus excluding many blind Canadians from fully enjoying the cable service they pay for.
