DAC Seeks Waiver of Emergency Dynamic Image Audio Description Requirement
The FCC should waive for five years its Section 79.2(b) emergency information accessibility requirement that dynamic image crawls used during breaking news and emergencies be conveyed aurally since there’s no good technology for broadcasters doing so today, its Disability Advisory Committee said Wednesday. Instead, voluntary best practices put together by broadcasters and advocacy groups are “the best and only way to pursue this,” said NAB Associate General Counsel Larry Walke.
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Legacy broadcasting technology is the problem, and eventual widespread adoption of ATSC 3.0 opens the door to an app overlay that would help describe such dynamic video components in news or breaking news segments, said American Council of the Blind Director-Advocacy and Governmental Affairs Tony Stephens before DAC voted to adopt the waiver recommendation that came from its video programming subcommittee. Walke said even with a five-year deadline extension, broadcasters will keep working with technology vendors on possible solutions. “We just haven’t had any luck yet,” and don’t anticipate any in the near future, Walke said. In addition to the best practices to be used by news organizations in improving emergency descriptions, ACB and broadcasters also anticipate putting on a training webcast or webinar this summer aimed at newsrooms, Walke said.
DAC spent considerable time discussing an unsuccessful proposal to shorten that waiver to four or three years, with Helena Mitchell, Georgia Tech Center for Advanced Communications Policy executive director, asserting the pace of technology change makes a five-year waiver too long. She and National Federation of the Blind President Everette Bacon—who also supported a shorter waiver—voted against the five-year waiver recommendation, though other blind community advocates backed it.
Real-time texting test efforts sponsored by Gallaudet University’s Rehabilitation Engineering Re- search Center show carrier interoperability is working well, said Gallaudet Technology Access Program Director Christian Vogler. But the testing is showing some challenges such as interface glitches when people type simultaneously. Vogler said carriers with which it’s working—Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile—are aware of the problems and are trying to address them. Vogler said RTT-to-text technology “works beautifully” and use of similar gateway tech should be a model for companies to adopt even though it’s not required.
Vice President-Federal Regulatory Affairs Ian Dillner said Verizon internally debated whether to go with an app or native handset approach for RTT implementation, with similar debates likely having gone on at other carriers since FCC rules don’t mandate a particular approach. He said Verizon worked with LG and Apple to incorporate RTT capabilities in the devices instead of the app route, since it felt the FCC long term was interested in native incorporation in devices. Public Policy Director Susan Mazrui said AT&T opted in the short term a free app approach to assuage consumer fears about needing to buy new devices, though it will be switching fairly soon to devices with built-in RTT capability. She said her company changed its billing system to include unlimited voice, since RTT service counts as a voice call and it didn’t want the service to penalize people with a hearing loss or speech disability.
The FCC talked with a variety of federal agencies about their interest in the agency’s Ace Direct open-source call-routing platform, and with New York City and Virginia, said Telecommunications Relay Service Program Fund Coordinator David Schmidt. He said the agency is in the final steps of putting up a beta version of Ace Direct.
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn raised red flags about the agency’s Communications Act Title II rollback as possibly crushing accessible services if they conflict with services provided by ISPs (remarks here).