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Posts Tagged: FCC
CNN: We shouldn’t have to add captions
CNN told a California court yesterday that it shouldn't be required to provide closed-captioning for every video clip on its website. Lawyers for the Time Warner network says it would slow down its ability to report the news, add cost and make the information less accurate. In fact, CNN argued that the requirement is a violation of its First Amendment rights because the network has been singled out while the FCC is working on new online closed-captioning regulations CNN wants the Ninth Circuit to reverse a lower court ruling in favor of the Greater LA Council on Deafness. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of deaf Californians who are hoping to set a precident for the entire news industry. CNN already provides captioning on its television broadcast, as required by law, but does not do so on its website. New FCC rules will soon require recently captioning for professionally produced online videos, including newscasts, but the regulations do not cover short clips of less than 3 minutes or so.
Closed Captioning Inventor
Texting to 911 Coming
Texting to 911 should be here by 2014. The FCC says the 4 big wireless carriers have agreed to push the service through next year with full coverage for it by May 15, 2014. The Commission is calling the effort Next Generation 911. Users will gett a text message back from the carrier if their attempt to reach 911 fails. AT&T and Verizon are already testing 911 services. AT&T has a statewide trial effort going on in Tennessee. Next year, the FCC will look at making it possible to send photos and videos to 911 centers.
Read More at DeafNewsToday.com
Closed-captioning Milestones
Closed captions are called “closed” because video viewers can decide whether to turn them on or off. On the other hand, open captions are visible at all times.
- 1971 - A preview of closed captioning is demonstrated at The First National Conference on Television for the Hearing Impaired in Nashville
- 1972 - Closed captions is embedded within the normal broadcast of the ABC show Mod Squad at Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University).
- 1972 - The French Chef becomes the first TV program to include open captioning on PBS. Later the same day a rebroadcast of ABC News includes open captions.
- 1973 - The Captioned ABC News becomes the only timely newscast accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
- 1976 - The FCC adopts standards for the transmission of closed captioning on TV and requires license holders to transmit emergency messages in a visual format.
- 1979 - The National Captioning Institute is created
- 1980 - The ABC Sunday Night Movie, The Wonderful World of Disney and Masterpiece Theater are among the first closed-captioned television series broadcast for viewers with caption decoders
- 1982 - Real-time captioning debuts
- 1990 - The Americans With Disabilities Act is passed, requiring all federally-funded public service announcements to be closed-captioned.
- 1990 - The Television Decoder Circuitry Act requires TV sets 13 inches or larger to be capable of showing captions within three years.
- 1990 - Wheel of Fortune became the first game show to be closed captioned.
- 1992 - FCC adopts technical standards for closed captioning on cablesystems.
- 1996 – The Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires the FCC to develop rules for closed captioning of television programs
- 2010 - By order of the FCC, 100% of all new analog and digital Spanish languageprograms must be closed-captioned
Read More at DeafNewsToday.com
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Captioning falls short
Critics of new FCC rules on Internet captioning are the topic of a Washington Times article here.
Read More at DeafNewsToday.com
Emergency info MUST be captioned on Broadcast Videos
The FCC has issued a notice to video distributors, reminding them of their obligation to make all emergency information accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing. The Commission grants no exceptions to this requirement and accepts no excuses, even when it comes to breaking news - even when news reporters are ad libbing and not speaking from a prepared script. This rule covers broadcasters, cable systems and satellite television services - even those located in places away from areas affected by the emergency. Those emergencies include natural disasters such as tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and wildfires, along with man-made disasters such as discharges of toxic gases and industrial explosions. How serious is the FCC about this? One TV station was fined because, during coverage of wildfires, it aired a American Lung Association representative who gave the unsurprising advice that viewers should stay indoors, run their air conditioners with a filter, and avoid exercise. The station’s failure to include a visual presentation of that advice led to a whopping $20,000 fine. The FCC also requires video distributors to give the Commission contact information so that anyone in the audience - and that means you - who sees a problem with closed captioning can reach the video distributer directly to tell them about it. To file a complaint with the FCC about captioning, go here.
Read More at DeafNewsToday.com
Captioning Deadline Looms
The first deadline for FCC mandated closed captioning for Internet video is growing close. The end of September marks the first phase of implementation. After that deadline, the list of types of videos that must be captioned will grow. The rules do not cover YouTube clips and other amateur videos, but professionally produced videos, particularly those already made available through broadcast, cable or satellite services. The September 30th deadline concerns full-length video published or shown on TV in the U.S. that has not been especially edited for the Internet (in other words, video that includes deleted scenes and altered TV scores would not come under this deadline, but video with a different number of commercials would still have to be captioned by the deadline). The next deadline after September is March 30, 2013. That's when all live and near-live programming must be closed captioned. Broadcasters will have 45 days after the original date of broadcast on TV to provide captions for materials produced between March 30, 2014 and March 30, 2015.
Read More at DeafNewsToday.com
On this date in History..
It was 19 years ago today (July 1, 1993) that the FCC requires all U.S. analog television receivers with screens 13 inches or larger to include built-in decoder circuitry that could display closed captioning.
Read More at DeafNewsToday.com
Internet Video Captioning
The FCC says video viewed over the Internet must have closed captioning, even if the material is displayed on a television. The agency is also requiring video distributors to make the captions of the same quality as those available on regular television broadcasts. The rules apply to new broadcasts and to reruns, 45 days after a TV rebroadcast. In four years, the FCC says the distributors will have only 15 days to turn around the captioning instead of 45 days. These new rules will start when they are officially published in the Federal Register.
Read More at DeafNewsToday.com
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