Consumer Groups, Industry Spar at FCC Forum on Updates to Online Video Captions
Consumer advocates didn’t see eye to eye with MVPD and broadcast industry officials over whether the FCC has the authority to expand closed captioning requirements to online video, at the agency’s virtual Video Programming Accessibility Forum Thursday. The FCC doesn’t have “plain and clear authority” for stricter rules under the Twenty-First Century Video Accessibility Act, said NAB Associate General Counsel Larry Walke. The agency has “broad technology-neutral authority” under the 1996 Telecommunications Act to separate captioning requirements from the distribution method of a video, said Blake Reid, director of the University of Colorado’s Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic and attorney for Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (TDI): “It’s a civil rights issue.”
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The forum was spawned by the response to an April FCC public notice seeking comments on updating the FCC’s accessibility rules (see 2106080072), said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel at the event. Rosenworcel worked on the CVAA as a congressional staffer and kept a framed copy outside her FCC office, she said. “FCC policy needs to keep pace” with technological change, said Rosenworcel. Several consumer groups represented at the forum, including the National Association for the Deaf, previously petitioned the FCC to address accessibility in video conferencing (see 2102110050) and act to improve live and online video captions (see 1910160028).
“The FCC should be cautious about adopting any rules that could hinder technology that makes it easier to caption online videos,” said Walke. “Any interpretation of the CVAA to require captioning beyond programming aired on traditional television would be inconsistent with the statute and legislative intent,” said NCTA Associate Counsel Jacqueline Clary.
FCC rules already require any full-length video that was shown on broadcast or MVPD television to be captioned when it appears online, as well as most clips from such programming. TDI and NAD want captioning requirements expanded to online video that hasn’t appeared on TV, and for the agency to close carve-outs for live and near-live video and for video that appears on third-party websites, said NAD Policy Counsel Zainab Alkebsi. “There is more the FCC can do,” she said.
The exceptions for live video and third parties are “a recognition of real world limitations on broadcasters,” who need to quickly post breaking news clips and have no legal authority over third parties posting their clips, said Walke: “We don’t see them as loopholes.”
MVPDs, broadcasters and streaming services are already voluntarily captioning much of their online video, said Clary, Walke and representatives from several streaming services. Amazon Prime Video Content Operations General Manager Daniel Kocmarek and Netflix Director-Accessibility Heather Dowdy said their companies work with video distributors to increase the amount of captioned content for the services. Amazon has developed software based on Alexa to provide captions for some non-captioned content, said Kocmarek. Shorter form clips “present challenges,” conceded Jim Denney, NBCUniversal executive vice president.
Gallaudet University Technology Access Program Director Christian Vogler said MVPDs, streaming services and broadcasters should work together to make it tougher for video clips to end up online without their associated captions, and to standardize tools for adding captions to online clips and for reporting errors. The “workflows” for captioning are the same as in the 1980s, he said: “I am certain there is great potential for innovation.”