Subtitles, audio descriptions and signed broadcasts are likely to remain unavailable to viewers of Channel 4 until mid-November, after an incident in September severely affected the broadcaster’s output.
A month on from a fault at Red Bee Media’s west London headquarters, which also led to problems with the transmission of BBC and Channel 5 shows, accessible programming remains unavailable. More than 500 complaints have been logged by Ofcom.
In its latest statement, Channel 4 apologised for the issue, saying it realised it was “incredibly frustrating” for viewers and engineers were working “around the clock” to resume normal service. However, owing to the scale of underlying technical issues, it said subtitles and other accessibility services may not be available until the middle of next month.
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In the incident on 25 September, channels including Channel 4, More4, Channel 5 and S4C were taken off air. BBC One and BBC Two were also affected but they were able to switch to a backup.
It was reported that the activation of a fire alarm at Red Bee’s broadcast centre in White City, west London, led to server outages. In [...]