Advocacy

U.S. Senate Passes Twenty-First Century Communications And Video Accessibility Act Of 2010 By Unanimous Consent

The U.S. Senate passed the 21st Century Communications and video Accessibility Act (S. 3304) by unanimous consent, virtually assuring that the disability rights act guaranteeing access by deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind and vision-impaired consumers to all forms of media will become law.

Passage was expected after the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved its version of the same bill, H.R. 3101, last week, and now all that is required is reconciliation of the two bills, a final vote in the House and President Obama’s signature. In what House sponsor Rep. Edward Markey has called “online ramps to the Internet” for people with disabilities, the new law will, among many other things:

• Require captioned television programs to be captioned when delivered over the Internet.
• Authorize the FCC to require 7 hours per week of TV video description for vision-impaired people on the top 4 network channels and top 5 cable channels nationwide.
• Allocate up to $10 million per year for communications equipment used by individuals who are deaf-blind.
• Require devices of any size to be capable of displaying closed captioning, delivering available video description, and making emergency information accessible.
• Require accessible user controls for televisions and set-top boxes, and easy access to closed captioning and video description.

The new law is a huge step forward for people with disabilities in an age when equal access to Internet services is an absolute must for anyone to successfully earn a living and enjoy the quality of life that other accommodations have enabled ever since passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) 20 years ago.

Big Movie Theater Chains See Writing On Wall And Start To Provide More Closed Captions

On the same day that the U.S. Justice Department was asking for comments on a proposed rule requiring movie theaters to provide closed captions for hard-of-hearing customers along with audio descriptions for blind theatergoers, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley was finalizing an agreement with three of the biggest movie theater chains to dramatically increase accessibility options at movie theaters throughout the state.

It’s no coincidence that the major theater chains are finally agreeing to provide more accessibility services at the same time the government is making noises about strengthening its mandates. In Massachusetts, the agreement was a settlement of a formal civil rights complaint brought by deaf and blind residents alleging discrimination because of the absence of accessible technology.

The Justice Department put theater owners on notice it was considering changing its regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to mandate closed captioning and audio descriptions at all theater locations. In a notice published in the Federal Register, the Justice Department noted the slow progress the industry had made in providing accessibility options in spite of advances in technology making captioning and audio descriptions easier than in the past:

The Department is concerned about what appears to be a significant disconnect between the production of movies that have captioning and video description capabilities and the actual exhibition or availability of such movies to individuals with sensory disabilities. The Department also is concerned that even when captioned and video described movies are exhibited, their showings appear to be relegated to the middle of the week or midday showings.

The publication of the notice about the proposed rule change is the start of a three-to-six month process that will include comments by all parties, hearings, and ultimately a decision to revise the regulations or maintain the status quo.

The consent agreement in Massachusetts may indicate which way the political winds are blowing and presage similar agreement to increase accessibility nationally. Three of the nation’s biggest theater owners, National Amusements, Inc. (which runs Showcase Cinemas), American Multi-Cinema (AMC Theaters) and the Regal Entertainment Group (Regal Theaters) agreed to ensure that every location in Massachusetts is equipped with accessible technology that will provide meaningful access to the hearing and visually impaired, including captioning technology and description technology.

Captioning technology takes a movie’s sound (dialogue, music, sound-effects) and converts it to a captioned format that a hearing impaired audience member can read.  Description technology provides a narration of what is displayed visually on the movie screen (action, scene changes, facial expressions) during natural pauses in the movie’s soundtrack through headphones worn by the visually impaired.

Additionally, the theaters agreed that multiplexes with 10 or more screens will have at least two accessible auditoriums, one of which will be in the locations’ largest auditorium — a huge benefit to theatergoers frustrated that the captioned movies are never the ones they want to see. By requiring captioning and audio descriptions in the largest auditorium, hearing and visually impaired patrons won’t have to wait for blockbuster films to make their way to the smaller auditoriums that have historically been equipped with accessibility equipment.

All in all, a banner week for captioning advocates, capping the celebrations of the 20th Anniversary of the signing of the ADA legislation and passage in the U.S. House of Representatives, by a huge margin, of H.R. 3101, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, that will require more accessibility over the Internet including closed captioning of TV shows broadcast on the web.

After A Five-Year Wait, CapTel Real-Time Captioned Telephone Service Is Finally Available In Massachusetts

Nearly five years ago, I wrote, “I’m still a CapTel wannabee.” That was when the 32 states in the U.S. that had already approved the captioned telephone service did not yet include my home state of Massachusetts. Today I’m happy to say the wait is over. Starting on August 1, Hamilton Telecommunications will start providing its Hamilton CapTel service to residents of Massachusetts.

The CapTel captioned telephone service provides real-time captions of telephone conversations displayed on your phone. Users conference in a relay-service operator to provide a computer-aided transcription, which appears on an LCD display on their phones.

Why the long wait in Massachusetts? Politics, as usual. Enabling legislation was required to pave the way for the service, and our state legislature was slow off the mark. (Maybe that’s one of the reasons Massachusetts’ famed “Route 128 Technology Corridor” is a shadow of its former self these days.) The good news though is that I’ve been able to use another CapTel service for a while now, ever since the WebCapTel service went online. With WebCaptel, you don’t need a special phone but use your Internet connection instead to display the captions, and it works well. You can use it with your desktop or portable computer, or even with your iPhone. Web CapTel is available from Sprint WebCapTel as well as from Hamilton WebCapTel.

But even though I’m happy with the WebCapTel service, I’m sorely tempted to buy the CapTel phone manufactured by Ultratec and sign up for the service. It looks like a slick product that would be fun to use. In any case, being able to “see what they say” is the best way to avoid all those costly errors you must endure when a poor phone connection or a bad hearing day makes it impossible to get through a normal phone call.

U.S. House Passage Of Telecommunications Access Act Brings Universal Closed Captioning And Other Services A Giant Step Closer

The U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of H.R. 3101, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, was a huge bi-partisan(348 to 23) vote of confidence in the commitment of our society to support the right of equal access to commonly used public services — especially the airwaves and Internet — no matter what disabilities a citizen might have. The vote, on the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, ensures equal access for deaf, hard-of-hearing, and blind consumers to the media.

For hard-of-hearing people, it requires that TV programs distributed on the web provide closed captions, that remote controls have a button to easily access closed captioning on broadcast and pay TV, and that telecom equipment used to make calls over the internet be compatible with hearing aids, just as land line phones and cell phones must be hearing aid compatible. Mandating more captioning of popular web videos will bring the day of universal closed captioning in all media a huge step closer.

“Two decades ago, Americans with disabilities couldn’t get around if buildings weren’t wheelchair accessible; today it’s about being Web accessible. The ADA mandated physical ramps into buildings,” said U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), the sponsor of the legislation. “Today, individuals with disabilities need online ramps to the Internet so they can get to the Web from wherever they happen to be.”

The U.S. Senate version of the bill, S.3304, the Equal Access to 21st Century Communications Act, has been introduced by Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) and reported out by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Given the overwhelming support in the House, prospects for passage in the Senate and the President signing a combined version of the bill into law are good. Both the House and Senate versions also provide many protections for blind Americans, including audible descriptions of on-screen action on television and making cable TV program guides and selection menus accessible to people with vision loss.

An Official Complaint About Poor Video Captions Is Actually A Vote For Better Captions — Make Your Vote Count!

Everyone who needs open or closed captions to understand the TV, DVDs and web videos knows captioning services in general could stand substantial improvement. Ever since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandated captioning for almost all television shows, many hard-of-hearing people have come to depend on them. On my home set I keep the “CC1″ setting on all the time. But that doesn’t mean the captions always work. In fact, as often as not the captions provided by broadcasters — especially for talk shows, the news, or other live broadcasts — are woefully delayed or infuriatingly wrong. But I recently realized that bellyaching to family and friends was not going to result in better captions, and I discovered there’s a better way to complain. You can start with the FCC itself — there’s a simple online form on the FCC.gov web site that makes it easy to detail your complaint. The form has room for plenty of information, so make sure you jot down the specific problem you experienced, at what time, on what station, and with what television show. And make sure you have the contact information for your cable or broadcast service provider.

All the complaints in the world are worthless if they fall on deaf ears. That’s why it was gratifying to hear a report on how seriously the FCC takes captioning complaints, and what they do with them, from a top FCC official at a session on captioning at the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) Conference. In a writeup on the NAD blog, Karen Peltz Strauss of the FCC was quoted saying captioning complaints filed with the FCC go into a database that provides feedback on specific offenders as well as trend information on what kinds of captioning issues are most important to hard-of-hearing viewers. The FCC matches up the feedback from the complaint forms with the lobbying feedback from activist organizations such as NAD to set rules and policy.

A surprise guest, Karen Peltz Strauss, recognized NAD’s ongoing efforts, “NAD is doing an extraordinary job helping people file grievances. The FCC wants to help you. File with the FCC if your complaint is television related.” Strauss announced a new registry of video programming distributors. “If your complaint is about a service provided by Comcast, Verizon, RCN, or the TV networks such as CBS, NBC, or ABC, go to the FCC site at fcc.gov.” A new website will be launching soon making it even easier. The FCC really wants people to use the registry. If you’re having problems or issues with television captions, please make a claim. Strauss can be reached at the email address: karen.strauss@fcc.gov

The FCC has tremendous power over any broadcaster with a license to use public airwaves, and its administrative rulings can result in immediate solutions to short-term problems and improvements in service over the long term. So it’s worth spending the time filling out that form.

At the same time, there are a few other sources of bad captions that the government has less to do with — especially movie theaters and producers of DVDs and service providers such as Netflix who provide video content through the mail and over the internet. It’s important to raise your voice directly with these providers when you have a problem — sometimes they are immediately responsive, but at the worst they will listen to the feedback and eventually do something about it if they hear about the same problem from enough people. With the Baby Boomers hitting that age where they could use captions more often than not, you can expect more and more people to have those same complaints. NAD has good resource information on how to lodge official complaints about a variety of access topics. And there are ways to get directly involved in advocacy for more government action, such as the Caption Action 2 site on Facebook, which already has nearly 15,000 members. Or you can join the advocates pushing Congress to mandate that all web videos be captioned.

It’s nice to know the outlets for your agitation are there, but they will only have an impact if you use them. It’s nice to know that you do have a vote. Make sure yours counts!

Looking For A Movie And A Theater With Closed Captions? Captionfish Will Find It For You

Finally someone has done something very obvious and necessary, but also very difficult, that hard-of-hearing consumers have been awaiting for years. Captionfish is a website providing comprehensive listings of closed-captioned movies at theaters all over the United States. It is a sophisticated search engine that finds open captioned, “rear-window” captioned, subtitled, and descriptively narrated movies along with zip-code locating of theaters closest to your home.

This is no easy feat and it took a team of developers with some pretty impressive credentials to make it work so well. DeafCode LLC was founded by Brendan Gramer, Chris Sano and Greg Millam, who all have three things in common: each of them is deaf, each of them is an experienced programmer, and they all have a sense of humor (from their web site: “We’re a bunch of deaf geeks. Seriously. Geeky.”) Brendan works at Amazon, Chris works at Microsoft, and Greg works at Google. Talk about having the bases covered!

I’ve used the service and it works well, alleviating my frustration at the listings in the newspapers and online which usually, at best, only identify which theaters offer captions without saying which specific movies offer the captioning or what kind of captioning they provide. Captionfish shows you which movies are playing in theaters near you and exactly what kinds of captioning they have. Rear-window captioning — where you plant a transparent acrylic panel in the drink holder in your seat, and it reflects captions displayed by an LCD panel at the back of the theater — is a lot of fun to use and works great. Descriptive narration for vision-impaired theater-goers is a fantastic service.

It’s only too bad more theaters don’t offer more of these services for more movies. For that we’ll have to wait for ongoing advocacy efforts to pay off. Anyone who wants to lobby for more captioning in theaters and on the web can get involved and get more information by visiting multiple sites starting with the Caption Action and Captioning Web blogs, and for comprehensive information about captioning and other media access technologies and services, visit the WGBH Media Access Group web site.

How Google, Congress and Marlee Matlin Will Make Universal Video Captioning Inevitable For The Web, Television And Movies

Universal captioning of videos on the web, television, in the movies and everywhere else video can be shown may still be a long time coming, but it is definitely on its way. Propelled by a combination of new technology developments, political advocacy, legislative action, court rulings, and the marketplace laws of supply and demand, universal captioning of videos is inevitable. The movement, which got its first big push in the 1990s when the Federal Communications Commission required television broadcasters to provide closed captioning, has recently gotten a burst of new energy. When the government was slow to regulate the explosion of digital video on the web, the momentum for captioning stalled for a while. But now a new wave of advocacy, aided by Google’s desire to extend its web search technology to every nook and cranny of the globe, is making the dream of universal captioning come true. Here are some of the driving forces:

• Advocacy: Thirty-six million hard-of-hearing Americans are making their voices heard. Oscar winner Marlee Matlin, who has been deaf since she was 18 months old, has been a ceaseless, vocal equal rights advocate throughout her career. Recently, with organizations such as the National Association of The Deaf, she has been rallying the forces of change with appearances at FCC and Congressional hearings and constant communication to her 45,000 followers on Twitter. She has also recruited Hollywood friends like Ashton Kutcher (five million Twitter followers) to the cause as well. All the commotion has resulted in the kind of visibility that motivates change: this week The New York Times, which sets the agenda for both Wall Street and Washington, D.C., did a major feature on the momentum behind universal captioning.
• Legislation: Congress and the FCC are considering new rules making all broadband and internet content accessible to hard-of-hearing people, which could mean required captioning on everything. The latest push is in the House and Senate, where a combined bill — “The Equal Access to 21st Century Communications Act” — is being readied for a vote. It would require all internet videos, including movies and TV shows available on the web, to be captioned. It would also require all devices capable of displaying web video, including cellular phones and other mobile devices, to be capable of displaying captions.
• Legal Action: Advocacy groups have been suing in state courts for years to require movie theaters to provide closed captioned movies. A recent significant federal court decision ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires movie theaters to show closed-captioned movies unless doing so would constitute an “undue burden.”
• Technology and Market Forces: Google recently introduced new technology that automatically captions videos on the web. This is the kind of technology that’s been around for a long time but has rarely been deployed. The reason Google got it ready for its search service is simple economics: because Google’s web search algorithms look for written words, searchers will be able to find video content more easily now that it is tied to the captioned audio content on the videos. That means more Google searches, extending Google’s dominance of its market. Because Google is the global standard in search, expect other search engines to follow suit and captioned video to become a de facto standard on the web, regardless of government regulations.

In her FCC testimony, Marlee Matlin spoke to the frustration millions of hard-of-hearing people have in not being able to understand what’s being said on TV, in the movies, or in web videos. Recalling her first starring role at seven years old as Dorothy in a production of The Wizard of Oz, she spoke about her recent bitter disappointment when Netflix live-streamed the movie on its 70th anniversary. She sat down to view it with her five-year-old daughter for the first time…and Netflix failed to provide captions. The lack of captions was doubly insulting because, 20 years before, Matlin had lobbied to have The Wizard of Oz movie captioned for the first time. But when when she inquired of Netflix, they told her it was simply too difficult to provide those already-available captions on the internet video stream:

I was told the technology was “coming” and that I had to be “patient and wait.” Well as you’ve heard from my brief history, I don’t take things lying down and I did some investigating….Eventually I found out that there was actually no problem in the technology. In fact, the technology exists to stream content with closed captions. What it came down to was the same issue I encountered 20 years ago – a lack of understanding and a lack of will and desire by broadcasters, content providers and equipment manufacturers to provide full access by passing through closed captions for programming already captioned.

She’s right. The technology does exist, and with more advocacy, more legislative action, and more push from the market, we will start to see it come on line sooner rather than later. She’s also right that none of us should be told to be patient or to wait. The time for universal captioning is now.

Vuvuzela Or No Vuvuzela, Ear Plugs Are A Must To Protect Your Hearing At Any Stadium Sporting Event

Phonak’s Hear The World Foundation touched a nerve when it warned World Cup fans of the damage stadium noise can cause to your hearing, especially if you’re in the midst of a chorus of vuvuzela horns. It turns out that, at 127 decibels (dB), a vuvuzela is louder than an air horn. On top of normal cheering in a heated match, the sound can quickly do permanent damage to your hearing. After Hear The World issued its statement, the news of potential hearing loss spread across the media and the web like wildfire — Google the phrase “vuvuzela hearing loss” and you will see 71,000 entries. What’s the best way to prevent hearing loss from noisy stadiums? There’s been talk of banning vuvuzela horns at the World Cup and other sporting events. My preference, though, is to see everyone start using simple ear plugs, which can protect you from all stadium noise at any sporting event, which, vuvuzela or no vuvuzela, often surpasses decibel levels loud enough to cause hearing damage.

Next Page »