Update on the revised rules for audio-visual media services (AVSM)

Recent developments – In April, the EU interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogue’) reached an agreement on the revised rules for audio-visual media services (AVSM). In July, the lead committee of the Parliament approved this agreement.

Background – Article 7 of the current AVSM Directive says: “Member States shall encourage media service providers under their jurisdiction to ensure that their services are gradually made accessible to people with a visual or hearing disability.” Given the failure of previous non-legislative approaches, EBU called for a strengthening of this article. Unexpectedly the Commission proposed to delete the article, leaving to the newly proposed European Accessibility Act to set the obligation to make AVMS accessible for persons with disabilities. Fortunately, in their respective amendments, both the Parliament and the Council agreed to keep and strengthen the article, as is reflected in the resulting agreement.

Stronger Article 7 – Standing to the agreement, instead of simply having to “encourage gradual improvements” of accessibility, EU countries would now have a binding requirement to “ensure continuous and progressive improvements”. Other obligations include: reporting obligations for AVMS providers and EU countries; single and accessible national contact points to inform and receive complaints on accessibility issues; accessible emergency information given to the public through AVMS. Moreover, EU countries would have to encourage AVMS providers to develop accessibility action plans. Disappointingly, the Parliament amendments for consultation of disabled people’s organisations did not go through.

Extended scope – The compromise text, if adopted as such, would represent significant progress, also because the new directive will apply to broadcasters as well as to video-on-demand and to video-sharing social platforms (e.g. Netflix, YouTube or Facebook) to adapt to the gradual convergence of audio-visual media.

Now what? – For the revised directive to be adopted, the agreed text needs to be formally approved by the Parliament plenary and the Council. This is foreseen to take place in the fall.

Antoine Fobe, Head of Campaigning