WEB TV needs to have needs to have captions starting next month, FCC rules

TV networks and web video sites will have to start providing closed captions for any TV content available online by the end of September, the FCC ruled a few days ago (PDF of the ruling). The ruling reaffirmed the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which was signed into law by President Obama in October of 2010, as well as an FCC ruling from earlier this year.    However, the industry got a bit of a break, with the FCC ruling that they won’t have to provide customizable captions until early 2014.

Captions for web video have been a bit of a hot button issue for some time: Disability advocates have been arguing that web video providers aren’t doing enough to make their clips accessible to disabled viewers, and have actually sued both CNN and Netflix over missing captions.

Read more of Janko Roettger's GIGAOM article HERE.

Judge: Disabilities Act Applies Online Too

Knocking down arguments from Internet movie giant Netflix, a federal judge ruled this week that websites are subject to the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor in Springfield, Mass. comes in a case pitting disability advocates against Netflix.

Advocates alleged that the company operates in violation of the ADA because many movies and TV shows offered through Netflix’s streaming service are not captioned, making them inaccessible to those who are hearing impaired.

Attorneys for Netflix argued that the company’s offerings are exempt from the ADA and asked for the case to be dismissed. In rejecting that argument, Ponsor’s ruling paves the way for the lawsuit to proceed.

Read more of Shaun Heasley's Disability Scoop article HERE.

Proposed Rules for Internet Captions

From CC - ClosedCaptioning.net

Much progress has been made in recent months regarding accessibility and closed captioning of television content on the Internet. In July, the FCC’s Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee released a report that established a six month timeframe for the new rules that require captions on the Internet.

In short, the FCC must release advanced rules for Internet captioning by January 2012. All live and near-live programming must have online captions by this same deadline. A 12 month deadline was also given for edited programming to have captions online by July 2012.

The goal of these deadlines is to ensure that all users can enjoy and benefit from television content played on the Internet. In fact, the report released this past July states that the “fundamental performance objective is that regardless of how the captioned video is transmitted and decoded, the consumer must be given an experience that is equal to, if not better than, the experience provided as the content was originally aired on television.”

To strive towards this objective, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on September 19, 2011. Several rules are suggested to help implement the 21st CVAA and these suggestions are currently open to public comment. Some of the proposed rules include that video programmers must provide the necessary caption files to the video distributor; the programmer and distributor must ensure that captions will be available to the end viewer; and the quality of captioning on video viewed on the Internet must be no less than the quality of captions available when viewing the same video content on a television set.

As the Internet continues to significantly change how people view media, the new rules for Internet captions will play a tremendous role in providing equal access to everyone. For decades, the FCC has enforced regulations that provide access for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to content via closed captions on the television set. Thankfully, the FCC’s deadlines and proposed rules are good start to establishing the same access that has been provided on television sets to be available on content viewed on the Internet.

Article HERE.