FCC Report Cites Some Progress, Some Stagnation in CVAA Compliance
Little to no progress has been made in making non-smartphone services available to individuals who are blind or visually impaired, but smartphone advanced communications services features and functions made significant advances in accessibility for wide ranges of individuals with disabilities,…
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said the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau in the third FCC biennial 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) report to Congress, released Friday. It said more needs to be done to make equipment used with interconnected VoIP services more accessible. It said the accessibility of Internet browsers in mobile phones has improved for those who are blind or visually impaired, but there needs to be more progress especially on low-end to mid-range devices. The FCC said there are indications people with disabilities are increasingly included in product and service design, and new technologies have big potential to improve communications access by individuals with disabilities. Some communications technologies developed and deployed have barriers -- including the lack of interoperability of videoconferencing services and equipment and the lack of accessible alerting features for video calls and messages. The FCC said its Disability Rights Office during 2014 and 2015 received 45 requests for dispute assistance (RDA) alleging CVAA violations, with 26 involving accessibility and usability of equipment and 19 regarding accessibility and usability of services. The equipment-related complaints ranged from feature phones that lacked text-to-speech functionality or had keyboards hard to read or buttons too small to use, the agency said. Service-related complaints were predominantly about failure to provide instructions or billing in an accessible format or inaccessible contact information, customer service or directory assistance, it said. No consumers chose to escalate the RDAs to informal complaints for investigation, the FCC said.