I am extremely hard of hearing and rely on well written subtitles to appreciate many TV programmes however, most television subtitles are absolute rubbish.
Many fail to synchronise with the spoken words; this failing is especially noticeable on news programmes. Often the subtitles trail the spoken words making it difficult to follow the item in question. This seems to be more obvious when they feature out of studio interviews or reports.
Many programmes we want to watch do not have subtitles so I have to rely on trying to hear the spoken words which are often very faint. This means having to turn up the volume on the programme but then other noises such as music and advertisements, which interrupt, become explosive.
I have tried sending complaints to TV administrators but it is usually hard to find a suitable email address and even if I do, no one bothers to reply. I do not use the phone because of my poor hearing and I have found website chat to be a waste of time as questions are seemingly never understood.
Of course, we have subtitles available through our Sky Box permanently turned on but many programmes do not have them and most can be seen only via the Sky Box.
As it is, we have the black Sky Box as we found the white alternative difficult to operate with too many functions for us. This means we tend to watch only recorded programmes so we can speed up or delete where required.
Fortunately, the yellow button on the Sky Box remote allows me to turn off poorly synchronised subtitles, thankfully just for the programme in question which is somewhat helpful. But my real gripe is that subtitles are not always available where they are needed. Furthermore, unless a broadcaster is speaking very clearly, I cannot catch all that is being said when there are no subtitles.
I would appreciate Grey Power Federation approaching the correct sources to advocate for more well written subtitles, better synchronisation with spoken words and less excessive background noise so as to avoid turning the volume up and down.
- Bob Tidd, Masterton