Starting October 22, the House of Commons, in partnership with Public Works and Government Services Canada’s (PWGSC) Translation Bureau and the Centre de recherche informatique de Montréal (CRIM), will provide French closed captioning for Question Period, thereby making the work of Parliamentarians more accessible to all Canadians.
The House of Commons will be among the world’s first legislatures to use a state-of-the-art voice recognition technology to perform remote live closed captioning of its proceedings. With the introduction of this new service, the estimated three million deaf or hard of hearing Canadians will be able to follow Question Period live through the use of either English or French closed captioning.
Since 1991, the daily live broadcast of Question Period across the country on CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel, has been provided with English closed captioning and French sign language (Langue des signes québécoise or LSQ). The addition of French closed captioning continues to make Question Period even more accessible to the deaf or hard of hearing community.
For the broadcast time in your time zone, please check the schedule on CPAC’s Web site at www.cpac.ca. To access closed captioning on your television, go to the closed captioning function and select CC3 for French closed captioning in or CC1 for English closed captioning.