DE: Comments on 7.1.5 Spoken subtitles (Tab 7, Item 5, row 6)

Submitted on behalf of Digital Europe as part of #55 (closed).

7.1.5 Spoken subtitles

"Where ICT displays video with synchronized audio, it shall have a mode of operation to provide a spoken output of the available captions, except where the content of the displayed captions is not programmatically determinable.

NOTE 1: Being able to manage speech output range for spoken subtitles independently from general ICT speech is preferable for most users. That is possible when the audio file with spoken subtitle is delivered in a separate audio track and mixed in the end users device.

NOTE 2: Presenting the separate audio track with spoken subtitles in synchronization with the displayed subtitles/captions improves understandability of the subtitles.

NOTE 3: Providing subtitles/captions as separate text-streams, facilitates converting the respective texts into audio.

NOTE 4: Subtitles that are bitmap images, **or where the broadcaster has indicated that the subtitles are no suitable for text to speech use, **__are examples where the content of the displayed captions will not be programmatically determinable."

DE Comments:

Not Applicable.

Standard feature of TVs where this is provided as a separate audio stream.

Text to speech for TTML subtitles is possible and broadcaster can author and signal subtitles to be suitable for TTS. But unknown whether any TVs support this today, and will not be possible for most subtitles which use DVB format.

For app based content, will depend on the app.

Note: check defintions of subtitles and captions.

Note: no TVs are known to do TTS on subtitles today.

Note: spoken subtitles may conflict with other audio tracks.

Note: this won't generally be possible for TVs as most subtitles are delivered as bitmaps.

Voicing subtitles is not a core function of the TV, therefore TVs should not be covered by this requirement.