FCC Mandates Closed Captioning On Streaming Video

By a 4-0 vote, FCC Commissioners have ordered broadcasters and cable operators to provide "new video description regimes," which includes closed captioning, within nine months. The new ruling will make it possible for the approximately 28 million Americans with hearing deficits to enjoy the same closed captioning now required for TV broadcast.

In September, 2010 Congress passed the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 which assigned the FCC with creating video description rules in place by October 2011. The broadcast and cable industry had asked for a full year to implement the rules, but the deadline is now July 1, 2012.

In addition to captioning of any online video that is closed-captioned on TV, the new rules require the:

"FCC to study captioning of Web-original video. It also requires smartphones and other mobile devices to be accessible to the disabled, if that is achievable, and restores the FCC's video description rules thrown out by the courts in 2002."

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps fought for an earlier deadline, but agreed to the eventual compromise. "Although I would have preferred," he wrote, "and I am not convinced it would be too burdensome on companies to comply even earlier, I am pleased that the Chairman and my colleagues have moved up the timeline to support the long-delayed hopes of Americans with disabilities."

CC Gives Industry Nine Months to Implement Video Descriptions (Broadcasting & Cable)

Wisconsin Department of Health Services: Hearing Loss

S. 3304: Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (GovTrack.us)