FCC Seeks Comment on Apparatus Requirements for Emergency Information, Video Description Under CVAA
An FCC rulemaking notice proposed establishing provisions under the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) for making emergency information accessible to visually impaired people. The provisions would require TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors to use equipment capable of delivering video description and emergency information to those individuals, the notice of proposed rulemaking said (http://xrl.us/bn2kai). Under the CVAA, the commission is required to complete its proceeding on access to emergency information by April 9, and its proceeding on Section 203 of the CVAA pertaining to apparatus requirements for video description and emergency information is due Oct. 9.
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The commission seeks comment on how it should ensure “that television apparatus are able to make available video description, as well as to make emergency information accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired.” It’s requesting comments around the possible requirements for apparatus, including the appropriate deadline “by which we should require apparatus to meet the requirements that we adopt as part of this proceeding,” the NPRM said. The commission said that it previously imposed a two-year deadline. The commission sought comment on whether it should require MVPDs providing set-top boxes to provide customer support services to assist blind or visually impaired consumers “to navigate between the main and secondary audio streams to access video description and accessible emergency information."
The NPRM proposed to apply the video description and emergency information requirements “only to apparatus designed to receive, play back or record television broadcast services or MVPD services,” it said. The commission proposed that the apparatus requirements “would not be triggered by apparatus’ display of IP-delivered video programming that is not part of a television broadcast or MVPD service."
The commission asked interested parties to weigh in on whether it should include removable media playback apparatus, like DVD and Blu-ray players, “within the scope of the new requirements, but only to the extent that they receive, play back or record” TV broadcast or MVPD services. It also proposed allowing an entity to use an alternate means to comply with the requirements for apparatus by requesting a determination “that the proposed ‘alternate means’ satisfies the statutory requirements through a request,” or by claiming in defense to a complaint or enforcement action “that the commission should determine that the party’s actions were permissible alternate means of compliance."
The existing emergency information and video description rules will continue to apply to TV stations and MVPDs, “but not to IP-delivered video programming that not otherwise is an MVPD service,” the commission said. Comments are due 20 days after the NPRM is published in the Federal Register, with replies due 30 days after publication.