The Nation's Voice for People with Hearing Loss
It’s not news that video programming is ubiquitous on the Internet. What is news is that the amount of video programs with captions keeps getting greater by the day. The availability of tools that make Internet-based captioning easier and less expensive has helped Internet providers support captioning of videos. In addition, provisions of the 21st Century Communications Video Accessibility Act of 2010 will ensure that programming that has been viewed over television will have captions on Internet-based devices. With both the technology and the law in place, we can expect to see even greater access to Internet-based programming in the future.
One year ago, April 12, 2012, HLAA reported that the FCC had set a schedule for captioning over the Internet.
Well, a year later, we are seeing the rules for captioning over the Internet taking effect: pre-recorded video programming and live and “near live” programming that has been aired on television first with captions, must now be captioned when viewed over the Internet.
According to the FCC website:
On April 27, 2012, Hearing Loss Association of America, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. (TDI) and four other consumer organizations and the Technology Access Program at Gallaudet University (TAP) filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) requesting reconsideration of the Commission’s Report and Order on Captioning of Video Programming delivered over the Internet under the 21st Century Video and Communication Act of 2010 (CVAA).
On January 13, 2012, the FCC released a Report and Order adopting rules for closed captioning of video programming delivered using Internet protocol (the “IP closed captioning rules”). These new closed captioning rules were published in the Federal Register on March 30, 2012, and will generally become effective 30 days later, on April 30, 2012. For more information, see the "Small Entity Compliance Guide."
FCC released rules for Internet Protocol (IP) TV captioning January 13, 2012. This rule is a major component of the 21st CVAA implementation. See the FCC Order and accompanying statements by the Commissioners.
People with hearing loss seem to be among those who love the latest and greatest technology. Early adopters of email, IM, smartphones and text messaging, we are thrilled with world that provides tech solutions for communication problems.
However, not every new product delivers as much as we’d like or hope it will. One example of great technology that falls short in providing the kind of access some of us need is the Apple TV. According to the Apple website, the Apple TV is a device that allows you to stream programming over the Internet to your TV:
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) announced that it would make its standard for closed-captioning of online video content (known as SMPTE Timed Text) available free of charge. Making this standard freely available will help accelerate the availability of captioned video content online. Read SMPTE’s news release [View PDF]
Thanks to Dave Pearson and Dana Mulvany, members of HLAA, we received the following information about YouTube:
Every minute of every day, 20 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube. It’s hard to imagine so much uncaptioned video all in one place.
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