§ Mr. WhittingdaleTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how many films which have received funding from the Film Council have been screened with subtitling and audio description provision. [84961]
§ Dr. HowellsThe figures requested are not available. However, the Film Council is drawing up a wide-ranging disabilities policy, which will strengthen requirements for the provision of subtitling in Film Council funded feature films. It has also announced(a) allocation of up to £350,000 towards a pilot project to install captioning and audio description equipment in selected UK cinemas (b) allocation of a further 60,000 to make grants available to film distributors for captioning and audio describing films released on less than 100 prints (c) allocation of £40,000 in Lottery funding to invest in the research and development of a personal captioning device.