Amazon Still Not Following FCC IP Captioning Rules, Hearing-Impaired Groups Say
The FCC should “issue the maximum possible forfeiture against Amazon,” which isn’t captioning every TV program on its Instant Video service even after seven groups representing the hearing impaired made an informal complaint, the groups said. They said the company’s explanation of why 47 previously recorded programs weren’t captioned when the groups did a spot check late last year (CD Dec 21 p2) doesn’t mean it’s in compliance with the Internet Protocol captioning order. The order required prerecorded programs to be captioned when delivered in IP starting Sept. 30. A Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau official said it’s looking at the situation.
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The groups said they found four instances of live and near-live shows that appeared on the service since March 30, when such programs under the IP order must be captioned, lacking the written descriptions. Another 11 prerecorded programs allegedly lacked captions in April, including episodes of The Cleveland Show and Real Housewives of Atlanta, Beverly Hills and Orange County. Lack of such captions on Amazon and some other video programming distributors (VPD) is a continuing concern to those who are deaf or have problems hearing. That’s according to interviews Thursday with Gallaudet University Technology Access Program Director and Associate Professor Christian Vogler, who did both studies, Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons Executive Director Cheryl Heppner, and Georgetown University Institute for Public Representation lawyer Blake Reid, representing the advocacy groups.
It’s “really disappointing,” Heppner said of availability of captions for cable and broadcast programs that appear online. Many are “garbled,” not correct when compared to the on-screen dialogue or “difficult to read,” said the vice chairman of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network. It made the new filing with the Association of Late-Deafened Adults, California Coalition of Agencies Serving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Cerebral Palsy and Deaf Organization, Hearing Loss Association of America, National Association of the Deaf, and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. “The things that we were expecting to be available under the” 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which required such IP captions, “are not available on a consistent basis,” she said.
The FCC takes “these obligations to ensure the availability of captioned television programs when they're reshown on the Internet seriously,” said a bureau official on its behalf, which has done much of the agency’s work implementing the act. “We're looking carefully at the complaint and the responses from both industry and from consumers.” An Amazon spokesman declined to comment.
Many of the problems the deaf groups found last year stemmed from video programming owners (VPO) not giving Amazon the correct technical information needed to render the captions on Amazon Instant, the company said in a Feb. 14 letter to bureau officials including Acting Chief Kris Monteith. “There have been a handful of instances where Amazon was not able to render captions as timely as it would have liked.” There were delays getting captions from VPOs, errors in the caption files from such owners and “technical problems within Amazon’s system for rendering captions,” which it was working on before the complaint, the letter said. Amazon has since “redoubled its efforts to reduce those delays within its control: most significantly, instead of delaying publication of captions until Amazon has had the chance to assure their quality, Amazon now publishes captions when it receives them and typically performs quality assurance by noon the day after broadcast."
Compliance among some VPOs with the IP caption rules rose by 30 percent from November-January, Amazon said. “The Commission should not hold Amazon responsible for delays by the VPOs, given the Commission’s decision in its adoption of the rules that a VPD like Amazon should not be liable for the failure to deliver required captions when that failure is caused by a VPO.” The agency allows VPDs to improve caption quality as long as they're made available in a “reasonable” period of time, and that’s what the company did, it said. “In some cases, Amazon’s quality control process resulted in a de minimis delay in publishing captions ranging between one hour and four days (where the longer processing time typically fell over a weekend)."
That’s no excuse, the advocates responded Wednesday. “Amazon offers a litany of baseless excuses” and tries to read the IP captioning order requirement to “immediately” include captions online as something else, the response said. It said the agency should “require Amazon to immediately disclose the identities and contact information of its noncompliant VPO partners.” Episodes from March 31 and April 1 and 4 of the Daily Show, Reliable Sources, Fareed Zakaria GPS and an NHL game between the New York Jets and New Jersey Rangers lacked captions on April 6 or 9, said the update. Gallaudet’s Vogler told us he “spot checked” a small, non-representative sample of programs on the service.
"Some VPDs are complying better than others,” and Vogler continues checking various services, he said. “That it was so easy to find noncompliant videos is disturbing.” Some VPD, VPO and video programming providers “are taking the necessary steps to afford equal access to their programming,” and enforcement will ensure that’s the norm, said Reid. “We have been reviewing other platforms and will be submitting a formal report on our findings to the FCC soon.”