[WebPub] Proposed Rules for Internet Captions

[Chris Peterson @ MIT]

Hi Stephani -

The extent of the proposed rules is unclear to me. Specifically, I am uncertain about the meaning of "television" and "programming." Do we have a sense of if this means "anything that could be called video", or if it means "content produced by companies which, instead of or in addition to transmission via OTA, cable, and satellite, is being broadcast over TCP/IP, UDP, RDP, etc"?

- Chris

On Oct 4, 2011, at 2:41 PM, Stephani Roberts wrote:

Hello,

Here are some new details from the FCC's Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee that will impact video on the web. The full article is worth reading, and following as a topic if you're producing video for web delivery. It appears that the availability of television captions will be the guiding principle for web content as mentioned in this pull quote below.

'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.”'


--------- Full Article ------------------------

Proposed Rules for Internet Captions<http://www.closedcaptioning.net/webcasting/proposed-rules> (original site)
http://www.closedcaptioning.net/webcasting/proposed-rules

Proposed Rules for Internet Captions<http://www.closedcaptioning.net/webcasting/proposed-rules>
Television<http://www.closedcaptioning.net/category/television> Webcasting<http://www.closedcaptioning.net/category/webcasting>

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<http://www.fcc.gov/> 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<http://www.closedcaptioning.net/webcasting/21st-century> 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.

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For those who don't know, TechTV and MIT's YouTube channel both support captions. Here are some basic guidelines and resources for captioning. http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/accessibility/video.html

We'll do our best to keep you informed as Internet captions evolve as a standard.

Best,
Stephani


-----
Stephani Roberts
Web Accessibility Consultant
MIT IS&T Accessibility & Usability
stephani at mit.edu<mailto:stephani at mit.edu>
website: http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/accessibility/index.html

desk: 617.253.0866
mobile: 617.852.3100

Send accessibility testing requests to: accessibility at mit.edu<mailto:accessibility at mit.edu>




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