Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. According to NHS figures, 534,000 people—

Can you ask the question, please? 

Sorry—

Assembly Commission questions, question 1.

1. What plans does the Commission have to improve the broadcasting of proceedings in the Senedd? OAQ52922

Regarding the proceedings—recorded proceedings—if you could make a statement on how they are going to improve our recorded proceedings, is my question.

Quite close.

Yes: what plans does the Commission have to improve the broadcasting of proceedings in the Senedd? Llywydd.

Thank you. 

We have a continuous plan for improvements to broadcasting and AV services and this has recently seen infrastructure changes that have significantly improved reliability. The introduction of a Senedd.tv clipping tool has received universal praise. In the future we also plan to make proceedings more accessible by using technology such as voice-to-text transcription.

Thank you. As I mentioned, 534,000 people in Wales suffer with hearing loss. I also in Aberconwy have a very large demographic of older people, and it has come out recently—I had an ageing well conference on Friday, and I was approached a number of times by people who actually do try to tune in to Senedd.tv, but those with hearing difficulties are experiencing some problems. I raised it during the last term, and there were going to be some improvements made such as subtitles, but, in terms of the hearing, I've even had staff in my offices complain that they can't always hear it, even on full volume and things. Senedd.tv itself, the actual recording—it has been raised with me a number of times that it is quite problematic, so I'm just wondering what steps the Commission is taking to ensure that there are subtitles, and that consideration is given, particularly so, to those with hearing problems.

Thank you for the supplementary. You've raised two points there, one which is new to me—not raised with me before—about the quality of the audio ordinarily on Senedd.tv, and if that's not audible then it's not good enough. So, I'll make sure that we review that and ensure that it can be heard, certainly.

Then on the issue more generally of subtitling, subtitling retrospectively and live subtitling, we are investing in the infrastructure that we have and in the video capacity that we have to make subtitling more straightforward in the future. Live subtitling, though, especially live subtitling of two languages spoken in this Assembly, is quite challenging in terms of the technology, but also in terms of its accuracy of what we say, and it needs to be accurate in order to be respectful of what's said by Members here. So this is obviously something that would be of benefit to many people in our society, and generally a good thing to do, so we are looking both to invest and then to develop and use the technology of subtitling so that more people are able to access with ease what we say and do and decide in this place.