Australia's deaf community is alarmed the Federal Government is considering a proposal to remove captioning requirements for television broadcasters.

The Government wants to take away the requirement that all free-to-air broadcasters must complete an annual compliance report.

Currently free-to-air television broadcasters have to provide 100 per cent captioning from 6:00am until midnight.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 3 minutes 13 seconds 3 m 13 s Listen to Nance Haxton's report Download 5.9 MB

Former disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes said there was concern that could change under the new proposal.

"What they do is make it easier for the industry not to comply with these captions requirements, and people who are deaf are already concerned that sometimes quality of captions is not maintained," he said.

"This will put their captions at further risk."

A spokesman for the federal Department of Communications said the change would provide greater flexibility, and a complaints-based approach was more appropriate as part of the Government's deregulation agenda.

'Going backwards' with captioning requirement changes

But Deaf Services Queensland chief executive Brett Casey said reducing reporting requirements eroded the responsibilities of broadcasters, and would inevitably lead to less accurate captioning.

"As a business person myself, I'm all for reducing red tape, but within reason," he said.

"What I see here is that the Government wants to move to reduce that compliance reporting and also to change it to a complaints-based system, which relies on the viewer to ensure that the level of captioning is appropriate or not.

"In one way, I believe it shows that we're going backwards.

"The onus is on the deaf or hard-of-hearing person to make the complaint when something occurs, and in this day and age, with the technology available to record and capture data and be able to provide that data annually to the compliance body, I don't think it's a very onerous task to have to do that."

Victorian teacher Marnie Kerridge has been deaf since she was two. She said high-quality captioning is crucial for deaf people to be part of society.

"I can watch TV with my family and I can know what's happening in politics, government," she said.

"If that's taken away, then I'm even more disconnected and disengaged with the community."

Deafness Forum Australia chief executive Steve Williamson said many feared the changes would lead to a decline in standards.

"It's taken decades for Australian governments to lift the standard of captioning here, so any dilution of these standards will put us even further behind the US and the United Kingdom, and this is at a time when we need to be trying to catch up," he said.

"We recognise that, of course, it's important to minimise bureaucracy and unnecessary legislation.

"But that must be balanced against the needs of the people it serves, and in this case the consumers simply weren't consulted."