HRT Introduces News with Subtitles for the Deaf

The Croatian Radio and Television (HRT) on Monday introduced a new service to enable the deaf to follow the news.

The new HRT service can be used during the airing of the main news programme Dnevnik at noon and 19:30 hours. To activate the subtitles, one only has to go to teletext page 888. 

“The HRT invested around a million kuna into the project and the news programme prepared it for a year. We mostly wanted to help people with hearing and speech disorders, of whom there are 80,000 in Croatia – Dnevnik’s editor-in-chief, Vladimir Roncevic said.

The Health Ministry says that the right to information is the basis of democracy and subtitles in the news are or historic significance.

HRT director Marija Nemcic said that she believed the service would be expanded outside of the news programme.