Redraft 7.1.5 Spoken subtitles to capture the correct scope

Clause 7.1.5 Spoken subtitles was modified in updating EN 301 549 was incorrectly scoped to only be applicable to "interlingual subtitles". This was incorrect and, in doing this, new terms were introduced and the use of a simple well-defined term "subtitles" was compromised.

Issue #492 (closed) deals with the definition and widespread use of the term "subtitles" instead of "captions".

When the EDF originally requested the inclusiong of a "Spoken subtitles" requirement in 2018, this was what they identified as the need:

There are many countries in Europe which do not dub audiovisual content into the national language(s). They caption the original version, which excludes people with visual disabilities and some with intellectual disabilities, as well as many more people who simply do not have a sufficient reading speed or find reading very tiring.

Spoken subtitles can be provided either in the video as an additional audio track (like audio description), or by the consumer’s device. In the latter case, the captions must be closed captions for the device to be able to read them aloud with a voice synthesizer.

Subsequently, ANEC identified that the version of clause 7.1.5 in the v012 version of the EN 301 549 update,and its linking of spoken subtitles to "interlingual subtitles" limited the scope of where spoken subtitles are required:

Although audio subtitles are generally used for interlingual subtitles, as they allow to understand the source audio, they are also needed sometimes in intralingual subtitles: for example, when the audio quality is very bad and intralingual subtitles are offered. Or when strong dialect is subtitled.

The ISO_IEC 20071-25;2017 definition of spoken subtitle is extremely simple and to the point:

3.2.1
spoken captions/subtitles
audio captions/subtitles
captions/subtitles that are voiced over the audiovisual content

Note 1 to entry: In this document, the term “spoken captions/subtitles” will be used