Act on the operation of radio and television broadcasting, accessible urgent announcements and accessible-programme records of broadcasters, and accessibility action plans and evaluation of television broadcasters

Section 32(2) of the Act on the operation of radio and television broadcasting requires a television broadcaster, after consulting the organisations of people with hearing impairment and people with visual impairment, to prepare for each evaluation period an Action Plan for making programmes accessible to those people, by which it commits to raise the total share of accessible programmes over the previous period through appropriate measures.

Section 32(2) sets the plan by programme and by year from 1 July to 30 June, counts the share of accessible programmes from the total running time of programmes broadcast, and requires a new plan to be submitted to the Council by 30 June of the year in which the previous period ends.

Section 32(3) requires the broadcaster to submit to the Council by 30 September of the year in which the evaluation period ended an evaluation of the plan, with the identification and broadcast time of each accessible programme.

Section 32(4) takes out of the plan and evaluation duties programmes made mainly of content other than programmes and programmes made mostly of programmes that by their nature cannot or need not be made accessible, in particular music programmes, programmes promoting the broadcaster's own broadcasting, programmes made only of graphics or teletext without spoken word, and local broadcasting programmes.

Section 32(1)(k) requires every broadcaster to give state bodies, local authorities and the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, in the urgent public interest and on their request, the airtime needed for important and urgent announcements connected with a declared state of emergency, state of danger to the state, state of war or state of cyber danger, a hydrometeorological warning, a notice of an obstacle to publishing in the Collection of Laws or public-health measures, and to ensure the announcements are also made accessible to people with hearing impairment, with both descriptive subtitles and Czech Sign Language interpretation, and to people with visual impairment.

Section 32(1)(l) requires every broadcaster to keep, in the form broadcast and in proper technical quality, recordings of all programmes and other parts of the broadcast, including the versions made accessible to people with hearing or visual impairment, for at least 30 days from broadcast and to lend them to the Council on its written request.

Section 2(2)(g) defines descriptive subtitles as an optional Czech-language text synchronised with the soundtrack that captures speech and meaningful sounds and identifies speakers off screen. Section 2(2)(h) defines audio description as an optional verbal commentary on the visual component of a programme for people with visual impairment, without limiting perception of the spoken word of the original soundtrack. Act 242/2022 replaced section 32(2) of the Act and added sections 32(3) and (4).

Act 242/2022 took effect on the fifteenth day after its promulgation. Section 16(8) of Act 242/2022 required a licensed broadcaster, from the day that Act took effect until 30 June 2023, to keep the share of accessible programmes set by section 32(2) in its earlier wording as if it were an Action Plan. Section 16(7) of Act 242/2022 required a nationwide television broadcaster to submit by 30 June 2023 an Action Plan for the shortened period from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2025.

Section 16(7) of Act 242/2022 required a licensed broadcaster to commit in that plan to provide at least 30 % of broadcast programmes with hidden or open subtitles from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025. Section 16(10) of Act 242/2022 required a television broadcaster other than a nationwide one to submit by 30 June 2023 an introductory plan for the same period by which it commits to start making programmes accessible.

Act 119/2025 added the words on descriptive subtitles and Czech Sign Language interpretation to section 32(1)(k) and changed the basis of the accessible-programme share in section 32(2) to the total running time of programmes broadcast. Those amendments of Act 119/2025 took effect on 1 July 2025. Section 5(1)(a) makes the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting supervise compliance with the legal rules on broadcasting and the conditions of licences and registrations.

Section 5(2)(b) makes the Council act as a publicly accessible online contact point for information and complaints about making television programmes accessible to people with hearing or visual impairment, and the contact point must itself be accessible to people with disabilities. Section 59(1) to (3) provides that the Council first notifies a broadcaster of a breach and sets a period to correct it, and imposes no penalty if the broadcaster corrects the breach in time.

Section 60(1)(c) makes it an offence to fail to provide airtime for the urgent announcements of section 32(1)(k), or to fail to make them accessible to people with hearing and visual impairment. Section 60(1)(d) and (e) make it an offence to destroy the recordings before the period of section 32(1)(l) ends or to fail to lend a requested recording to the Council within 15 days of receiving the request.

Section 60(1)(o), (p) and (q) makes it an offence to fail to submit the Action Plan or its evaluation to the Council in time, or to fail to meet the commitment to raise the share of accessible programmes made in the plan for the period that ended. Section 60(7)(a) sets the fine for an offence under section 60(1) at 5,000 to 2,500,000 koruna. Section 61(1) gives the proceedings on offences under the Act to the Council.

Section 17(1)(f) makes the applicant's readiness to provide a certain percentage of broadcast programmes with hidden or open subtitles for people with hearing impairment one of the facts the Council weighs when it decides on a licence for television broadcasting.