Researchers at the Laboratorio de Accesibilidad Audiovisual
(Laboratory for Audiovisual Accessibility) in Universidad Carlos III of
Madrid’s (UC3M) Science Park have created a system that analyzes the contents
of subtitles on DTTV. According to the data that is automatically gathered, 30%
of channels fail to comply with current legislation regarding subtitling and
accessibility.
The objective of this innovation, called SAVAT, is to
automate the control of subtitled content on Digital Terrestrial Television
(DTTV). To do so, the system records the signals of all channels and analyzes
the subtitles, so it can then check the number of hours subtitling was emitted,
its speed, the coherence of the signal and the accuracy of spelling, among
other parameters. Its creators, researchers at the Centro Español del Subtitulado
y la Audiodescripción (CESyA – the Spanish Center for Subtitling and Audio
Description, a center that comes under the Real Patronato sobre Discapacidad –
the Royal Trust for the Handicapped - managed by UC3M), have been working at
the UC3M Laboratory for Audiovisual Accessibility of the Technology Center for
the Handicapped and Dependents (Laboratorio de Accesibilidad Audiovisual del
Centro de Tecnologías para la Discapacidad y Dependencia) to develop their own
algorithm for detecting and calculating with greater than 95% precision the
time that subtitles are available on each working television channel.