Spain’s New Audiovisual Law and Accessibility 

The European Accessibility Act of 2019 set accessibility goals but left it to EU Member States) to decide how they want to reach them. Member states had three years (till 2022) to introduce new or update existing legislation to comply.

Last summer, Spain passed new legislation intended to bring the previous audiovisual law up  to speed with the reality of a transformed mediascape.

This new law (Ley General de Comunicación Audiovisual (Ley 13/2022, de 7 de julio -LGCA)  attempts to address the changes in the world of television and to regulate online media formats, including obligations regarding access services.

 

 

New platforms

The previous Spanish law primarily affected the traditional linear channels. The new law brings into effect obligations for streaming platforms, VOD services and even influencers when they are established in Spain.

So, pay TV platforms like Movistar +and VOD services like Flixolé or Filmin, which previously were not regulated, are included.

However, given the European Directive regarding country of origin, those platforms established outside of Spain but within Europe (such as Netflix, HBO or Amazon Prime) would be subject to the laws in their “host” country, even if they have services in Spain.

So, where other countries have not yet implemented or updated legislation, they will not have any obligations regarding accessibility.

 

 

Changes

The new law extends obligations to provide captions, audio description and sign language translation to pay TV, on-demand TV and on-demand audio. In addition, it establishes sanctions for those that do not comply.

It also states that those services should prioritise specific types of services of interest to end users and programming with high audience ratings.

The law also includes stipulations around the quality and interoperability of access services, with platforms and end users needing to agree on codes and metrics for autoregulation.

There are still a lot of details regarding exactly how the law will work, which still need to be clarified. At the end of last year, an information session was held in Madrid with the regulator to try to explain some of the myriad of questions that providers of video services had.

For example, are FAST channels considered linear? Will exceptions be applied to individual channels with a low audience even when a media group surpasses the overall revenues stipulated?  How will prime-time/maximum audience slots be decided when they differ drastically by channel and content type? How do content owners know which content is of specific interest?

 

 

Next steps

Many of the answers to these questions will need to be established over the coming months and years as the government works to establish and publish a regulatory framework by Royal Decree.

In the meantime, it falls to the Spanish regulator CNMC to establish a list of those services affected and measure and report on what they’re achieving. This is not an easy task, especially regarding quality measurement, when the official standards for accessibility services (Normas UNE) are decades old and only applicable to linear digital terrestrial TV.

The CNMC stated that in terms of quality measurement, which to their knowledge has yet to be regulated by other EU Members, they would proceed with caution.

Over the coming months, the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation will work hard to complete the regulatory framework to accompany the new law, while the regulator will determine how exactly they will police compliance.

In the meantime, for more information, please download our report and need any advice on complying with access services requirements or any captioning, sign language translation or audio description services, do not hesitate to get in touch with Diana Sánchez, Global Pre-Sales Solutions Architect, Red Bee Access.