The Broadcasting Accessibility Fund Inc. (the Fund) is an independent and impartial funding body supporting innovative projects that provide solutions to promote the accessibility of all broadcasting content in Canada. The Fund will support projects that provide practical solutions to increase accessibility to broadcasting content and that, whenever possible, make use of inclusive design principles to promote accessibility at the earliest stages and in the most cost-effective manner for new technologies and applications in Canada.
Project Sponsor
Steering Committee
The Canadian Association of the Deaf-Association des Sourds du Canada (CAD-ASC) is the oldest national consumer organization of, by and for Deaf individuals in Canada for having its interests represented at national level.
James Roots, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of the Deaf, chairs the Project Steering Committee.
Founded in 1940, the Canadian Hearing Society (CHS) is a non-profit organization and the leading provider of services, products, and information that remove barriers to communication, advance hearing health, and promote equity for people who are culturally Deaf, oral deaf, deafened and hard of hearing.
The Canadian Hard of Hearing Association (CHHA) is a consumer-based organization formed by and for hard of hearing Canadians. CHHA works cooperatively with professionals, service providers and government bodies, and provides information about hard of hearing issues and solutions.
Media Access Canada (MAC) is a not for profit organization working towards a system of fully accessible broadcast content by 2020.
Quay Media Services offers a robust suite of services that include linear television broadcast, signal origination and master control play out and delivery, production facilities, media asset management and encoding/transcoding for both domestic and international customers. We also offer closed captioning, described video and subtitling capabilities.
Bell Media owns 30 local television stations led by CTV, Canada’s #1 television network; 30 specialty channels, including TSN and RDS, Canada’s most-watched specialty channels in English and French; and four pay TV services, including The Movie Network and Super Écran.
David Keeble is an independent business strategy consultant in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, specializing in the impact of new technology. In his consulting role he provides a range of services including strategy and policy development, research, and the creation of business and regulatory presentations, focusing primarily but not exclusively on the broadcasting and communications industries.
National Captioning Canada provides real-time and off-line closed captioning and transcription services to broadcasters, webcasters, governmental bodies, productions houses and other organizations requiring real-time transcription services. National Captioning Canada boasts a large roster of professional closed captioners and captions hundreds of hours of sports, news, entertainment and political programming per week.
Project Team
Christie Christelis - Project Manager
Christie Christelis is President of Technology Strategies International, a technology market research, analysis and strategy firm focusing on information and communication technologies (ICTs). He is project manager for the live captioning research project.
Dr Deborah Fels - Expert Advisor
Dr. Fels has a Ph.D in Human Factors from Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. She is currently employed as a professor in the Ted Rogers School of Information Technology Management, and the Director of the Inclusive Media and Design Centre at Ryerson University. Her research interests involve inclusive design, access to media and technology for people with disabilities and older adults, inclusive video game design and inclusive business.
Dr Pilar Orero - Expert Advisor
Dr Orero received her PhD from the University of Manchester Institute or Science and Technology (UMIST). She teaches at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) where she is the director of the European MA in Audiovisual Translation. She leads a number of government funded projects on accessibility and the media and participates in the ITU Media Accessibility Workgroup.
Pablo Romero Fresco - Expert Advisor
Pablo Romero Fresco is a Ramón y Cajal grantholder at Universidade de Vigo (Spain) and an Honorary Professor of Translation and Filmmaking at the University of Roehampton (London, UK). He is the author of the book Subtitling through Speech Recognition: Respeaking (Routledge) and the editor of The Reception of Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Europe (Peter Lang). He has collaborated with Ofcom in the UK, Ai-Media in Australia and CRTC/CAB in Canada, among other institutions, to introduce and improve access to live events and live television programming for people with hearing loss.