KENNEDY ZIMNIK: The best way if you want to ask a question is to put it in chat. Anyone can read chat or I can read the chat if you want me to as the host. So do you guys just want to handle reading questions from chat? That's how we usually do it at our events.
INTERPRETER: Is there a hand raising? Or it would just be chat?
KENNEDY ZIMNIK: You can raise a hand and I can then ask them to unmute. Right now they can't unmute themselves either. So either they can raise their hand, people just think it's easier or if they just don't want to talk, they can put it in chat, but we can do either. Whenever you have questions, just raise your hand or just type it in chat.
INTERPRETER: I don't know where you would see the hand raising. Because they can't turn on their videos. So I guess it makes sense for them to have it in the chat.
KENNEDY ZIMNIK: Yeah. Here.
INTERPRETER: Oh, I see it now.
The problem is, I'm not sure that while we're presenting, I don't know how much we can attend to the participants list.
KENNEDY ZIMNIK: You can just block out an amount of time to have questions. So it doesn't get overwhelming.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: Yeah, I'm sure we'll have plenty of time for questions.
KENNEDY ZIMNIK: Okay. Great.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: Okay. It looks like we have a few minutes left before we get started. I see a few people joining. I see the captions.
Is there anyone from the audience who has any questions or comments before we start or concerns about technical issues or anything.
There's an announcement from the captioner in the chat, with the link.
ELIOT GREENWALD: This is Eliot. Who will be moderating the chat questions to ask them? Who will be moderating that?
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: I think us. I think we'll be fine. And we'll certainly welcome questions throughout the presentation too. We can check in periodically to make sure people can ask questions when it's fresh on their minds too. So we've got a very generous period of time for our presentation.
All right. Well, it is 1 past 11:00, so wanted to be mindful of everybody's time. I think we should get started with our introductions.
First, I wanted to say hello and welcome to everyone joining us. Yesterday was a fantastic day for many of you who presented yesterday or participated and attended meetings. I think it's a very exciting time for all of us to really take a closer look at accessibility, especially during the pandemic and how very timely it is to make sure that everything is accessible in different areas of life, from medical services to employment to information and video programming and internet access. In our title for today's presentation, "Independent Living through Accessible Communication and Video Programming." I am Suzy Rosen Singleton with the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission and I'm very pleased to be joined by two of my colleagues here. I'll turn it over to Eliot to do his introduction.
ELIOT GREENWALD: Hi, I'm Eliot Greenwald, deputy chief of the Disability Rights Office at the FCC.
WILL SCHELL: And my name is Will Schell. I'm an attorney at the Disability Rights Office of the FCC. I'm also the complaints team lead right now.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: Okay. For the purposes of this presentation, we certainly welcome your questions. Please post those this the chat.
We don't know if we're going to take up our whole 90 minutes. We don't want to cut into everybody's lunch hour, so we'll see when we get done.
With that said, we will get started with our next slide.
If Gerard can turn on video now.
Before we get started with our presentation — oh, I see. Gerard is not able to start his video. We need the host to give him permission to start, the privilege of turning on his video.
For those who may want to do lipreading.
KENNEDY ZIMNIK: Oh, here we go. Sorry about that.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: Before we get started with the Disability Rights Office specific work, I wanted to give you a high-level view of the agency's strategic plan that's broken out into four different goals and to talk about how important they are in the work that we do as well.
The first is closing the digital divide. As you know, there are 61 million Americans with disabilities, and there are lots of accessibility gaps. So our goal for that particular number one in our strategic plan is to develop a regulatory environment to encourage the private sector to build, maintain, and upgrade next generation networks so that the benefits of advanced communication services are available to all Americans.
Where the business case for infrastructure investment is not in existence, we are working to deploy efficient and effective means to facilitate deployment and access to affordable broadband in all areas of the country.
So you will be hearing later also from Eliot about our broadband plan and so forth to ensure that people with disabilities are included and not left behind.
The second goal is to promote innovation, to foster a competitive, dynamic, and innovative market for communication services through policies that promote the introduction of new technologies and services in order to ensure that the FCC's actions and regulations reflect the current realities of the existing marketplace to promote entrepreneurship and expand economic opportunity and remove barriers to access and investment. And all of that will be with accessibility baked in, not as an afterthought.
Third, protecting consumers and public safety. We are to develop policies that promote the public interest by providing consumers with the freedom from unwanted and intrusive communications, things like robo calls, and to improve the quality of communication services for people with disabilities and protect their safety as well, public safety in general. So we'll be expanding more on that as well later about how DRO works towards that goal.
The fourth and final point on the strategic plan is reforming the FCC's processes to be transparent, to be efficient, to improve decision making, building consensus, reducing regulatory burdens, and to simplify public interactions with the agency.
So that is all a very high-level overview of our strategic plan and mission at the FCC for the overall agency, and next I will move in to the Disability Rights Office. We can go to the next slide, please.
For simplicity here, there's a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles on the screen. The first circle is labeled video programming. The second circle is labeled modern communications. And the last circle is labeled emergency communications. As in all Venn diagrams, all three of them overlap. And we will be going into each of these substantive areas of DRO's work.
Let me check to see if we've gotten any questions or comments so far.
Okay. Next slide. I will ask Eliot to get started with this one.
ELIOT GREENWALD: This is Eliot. It's good to be here with everybody.
When I go over this slide, for those looking at the PowerPoint, I am not taking these topics in sequence. Hopefully that won't cause too much confusion, but when I was preparing, it looked like there was a more logical flow than alphabetical to deal with these different topics.
So I'm going to start out with the second topic, which is broadband connectivity and accessibility. I'll first mention that there is an emergency broadband benefit fund. Congress established the emergency broadband connectivity fund of $3.2 billion for fiscal year 2021, and directed the Commission to use this fund to establish an Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, known as the EBBP.
This allows eligible low-income households to receive a discount off the cost of broadband service and certain connected devices during an emergency period relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, and participating providers can receive reimbursement for such discounts.
The recent report and order states that all connected devices for reimbursement should be accessible to and usable by users with disabilities. Disability outreach partners are being sought out. You can visit the FCC's website for that, which is www.fcc.gov/broadbandbenefit for more information.
There's also the emergency connectivity fund, which is part of the American rescue plan. Recently President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 into law, which creates a new 7.1 billion emergency connectivity fund to support remote learning for schools and libraries. And the FCC is now charged with implementation of this effort.
And lastly, the FCC distributed 200 million via the COVID-19 telehealth program as appropriated by Congress as part of the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act, known as the CARES Act, to healthcare providers provide connected care services to patients at their homes or mobile locations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On December 27th, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, known as the CAA, of 2021 provided the Commission an additional $249.95 million in funding for the COVID-19 telehealth program, and applicants will have to certify their own commitment to following existing laws such as the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act in order to apply for such funds.
Moving on to the next topic, I'm going to briefly mention technology transitions, which is of course an important part of modern communications. So as the telephone network transitions from copper to fiber and from analogue to IP-based service, this may adversely impact accessibility for individuals with disabilities with these technology changes, particularly with legacy equipment.
So the FCC takes measures in its rulemaking proceedings and complaint resolution process to safeguard accessibility as these technology transitions take place.
Right now I'm going to back up a little bit to section 255 of the Communications Act, which requires that telecommunications services and equipment be accessible to and usable by people with disabilities if readily achievable. And on April 1st of this year, or actually on April 1st of every year because we haven't quite hit April 1st yet, we release a public notice on accessibility record keeping and compliance certification and contact information reporting requirements. That way the public can look at our registry and make sure, if they need information on who the providers are and how to contact them, and this facilitates any complaint process against providers who are not making their telecommunication services and commitment, applying to both service providers and manufacturers accessible to and usable by people with disabilities.
On October 2020, the Commission filed its biannual report to Congress as required by the Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which we commonly refer to as the CVAA, and in that report, the Commission identified feature phones. You know, those are the old-fashioned phones that preceded smartphones but are still very much in use and are still being sold and deployed by people who are not interested in smartphones for one reason or another. But the feature phones are problematic for accessibility for those who are blind or visually impaired.
And now with Verizon and Tracfone entertaining a merger, several national deafblind consumer organizations filed comments regarding their concerns about accessible feature phones, and we are currently reviewing those comments.
Moving on to the third topic, or actually that was the third topic. Moving on to the fourth topic, up at the top of the list, is advanced communications services and equipment. This was part of the CVAA, which I just mentioned, which requires that advanced communication services and equipment be accessible to and usable by people with disabilities unless not achievable. Now, there are four categories of advanced communication services under the CVAA: Interconnected voiceover protocol, VoIP, nonVoIP, electronic services, which would be text messaging, email, any type of electronic text communications services would be electronic messaging, and interoperable videoconferencing services.
So with three of those four, that's pretty straightforward. They need to be accessible to and usable by people with disabilities unless not achievable.
With interconnected VoIP, there is a little exception in the act which is to the extent that interconnected VoIP services were regulated by section 255, which I just talked about a few minutes ago, prior to enactment of the CVAA, then they continue to be governed by section 255 rather than the ACS provision which is section 716 of the Communications Act.
Moving on to real-time text. In 2017 the Commission adopted an order authorizing mobile service providers to offer real-time text in lieu of TTY service, the ability to connect to real-time text rather than TTYs.
What real-time text is, it's carried by the voice channel of the mobile phone, and eventually hopefully with wire line service. Right now it's only available on mobile services. And basically you can access that in your mobile phone in the disability — in the accessibility menu. And the advantage of real-time text, for example, over short messaging service which is what everybody commonly refers to as texting, is the character is transmitted as it's typed. This is of critical importance in an emergency situation, where somebody may not be able to complete a message and hit the "send" button. At least, for example, if you're dialing 911, using real-time text, then at least part of the message gets across, even if the full message doesn't get across.
So we are in the process of phasing that in. The nationwide mobile providers have all deployed real-time text. It's available from any of them, and the smaller regional providers were required to have deployed that by June of 2020. And equipment that's been manufactured in recent years all has that or if it's been upgraded, all have real-time text capability. However, the manufacturer deadline — so that's all been taken care of. And then there's one final deadline, which is for basically resellers which comes into play in June of this year.
I think there's some final phases of equipment that need to be comply with the deadline by June of this year in terms of new equipment.
So I think we'll be seeing a lot more of real-time text over time. There are still some bugs being worked out in RTT, but as it continues to be deployed and people are using it, it should work better and better over time. And probably will become a mainstream product, not just used by people with disabilities over time.
So that's real-time text.
I'm going to now move on to relay services. For those who aren't familiar with telecommunications relay services, they're all governed by section 225 of the Communications Act. The Communications Act requires that common carriers, and that now includes providers of voiceover internet, make available to consumers relay services so that people who are Deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, or have speech disabilities may be able to communicate via the telephone network.
The two most commonly used forms of relay services right now are video relay service and internet protocol captioned telephone service. I'll start with video relay service. Under that service, someone who is Deaf or hard of hearing or has a speech disability or is deafblind can use a video phone to communicate with a communications assistant who then interprets the call. So therefore the person on the other end is using voice and the person with a disability is using American Sign Language. And the interpreter is interpreting the conversation.
With internet protocol caption telephone service, the user of that service is somebody — known as IP-CTS — is generally somebody who has some residual hearing but can speak. So they will use their own voice on the telephone conversation but they will read on a screen the captions of the telephone conversation, which are produced by a communication assistant or more recently the Commission has permitted the use of automatic speech recognition. And they will use a combination of residual hearing and the captioning to understand the conversation.
There's also what's known as traditional telecommunications relay, traditional TRS, which uses a TTY machine, which is basically an old, you know, which started out as an old converted teletype machine. They've become much smaller since then. And it's an analogue text service. One of the reasons why TTY-based TRS will hopefully be replaced by real-time text is that real-time text works much better in an IP environment than TTYs.
There's also speech to speech service, which is where a communication assistant will revoice, is particularly trained to understand the speech patterns of people with severe speech disabilities and will revoice what the person with speech disability says so the person on the other end can better understand what the person with the speech disability is saying.
There's also IP relay, which is similar to TTY-based service except instead of it being an analogue service, the person using IP relay is using a computer or tablet or smartphone to connect to the communication assistant, who is then speaking to the other person on the other end of the line. So it works very similar to TTY; it's just a more modern form of providing the text of the service.
Lastly there's analogue captioned telephone service, which is similar to IP-CTS except with IP-CTS, the link with the communication assistant, both the voice connection and the captions coming back are over IP rather than over the phone network.
So those are the relay services.
In addition, we have direct video calling. That's the third item of the bullet points. With direct video calling, it allows the call centers that are used by many companies, government agencies, and so on, to include in their call centers people who speak ASL who can have a direct video call provide customer support to somebody calling in to a call center. This provides for more effective communication because there is not a communication assistant in the middle of a call, and therefore, you know, therefore this will allow much more better customer service to people calling in to these call centers.
So this is something we've been doing some outreach on at the FCC to encourage large companies with large call centers to establish as part of their call center call takers who speak in ASL. And a number of large companies have done that. I think Verizon has done it. Comcast very recently started up their call center doing it. And we're hoping that large governmental agencies — you know, this would also be true of hotel chains, airlines, think of all the businesses that have large call centers. It would be quite appropriate. And it also would actually save these companies a little bit of money because it's a more efficient conversation, which means that without the CA in the middle means that the call should take less time if it's a direct call. But we're also encouraging large government agencies that have large call centers, for example the IRS or Social Security Administration or Health and Human Services all have large call centers. And they could also provide direct communications. It's not anything we can require, but it's something that we work hard to encourage.
And lastly I'll mention hearing aid accountability. Wire line telephones have been required for some time to be hearing aid compatible. The Commission a number of years ago extended that to wireless phones, to mobile phones. And over the years, the Commission has increased its requirements in terms of the number of wireless phones that need to be hearing aid compatible. It's currently 65% available of wireless mobile phones need to be hearing aid compatible. That number increases to 85% in October of this year.
And then in 2024 the Commission will be looking at whether to move that number up to 100%. But in the meantime, companies are starting to voluntarily make it 100%. So for example Verizon, the phones that Verizon provides to customers, they will only provide hearing aid-compatible phones to customers. They've just made that as a corporate policy to provide only hearing aid-compatible phones.
And as large companies start to say that they will provide only hearing aid-compatible phones, the manufacturer is only going to make hearing aid-compatible phones, so this may happen on its own if other companies adopt that type of policy.
And so that's basically — oh, I should mention one other thing about hearing aid compatibility is that wireless providers and manufacturers are supposed to include information on their websites about which models of their phones are hearing aid compatible. So that way consumers can look at the websites and figure it out. And also, if you go in to a store owned by one of the wireless providers, customer service representatives are supposed to answer questions about hearing aid compatibility to let the consumer know which phones are hearing aid compatible.
And with that, I will turn over the floor to Will, who will be talking about video programming.
WILL SCHELL: All right. Thanks very much.
I just wanted to put the video programming slide in context, so if you recall Suzy's Venn diagram and Eliot just covered all of the communication components of that communication thing, and I'm going to dive in to the video programming component now.
As you all know, we wouldn't know where we are anymore. I literally wouldn't know where we are if we didn't have our phones to kind of give us the map of our existence on the planet. And video programming is just as important. We pay tons and tons of money, probably too much money, to be able to watch video programming or television as we generally call it.
Our rules also require that video programming have a certain level of accessibility. And it's really important to people.
So let's start up at the top. Audio description. Audio description, in case you are not familiar, is audio-narrated descriptions of a television program's key visual elements. These descriptions are inserted into the pauses, the natural pauses of a program's dialogue. So if you haven't experienced audio description, I think it is actually something that's worth seeking out. And we can describe more about how to actually find audio description. But audio description generally makes television programming more accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired. I certainly appreciate it and use it. I am visually impaired myself. The CVAA requires that we periodically, that the FCC periodically update the audio description rules. And right now the commission's rules, we require that the most popular channels on TV provide described video. This is sent through the secondary audio stream. There's a secondary audio track on video programming on broadcast and cable video programming. And last year the local TV stations of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC that are located in the top 60 TV markets, those stations and the top five nonbroadcast networks, which are cable networks, those right now are Discovery Channel, History Channel, TBS, HGTV, and USA. All of those networks and stations have to provide 50 hours of audio-described prime time and/or children's programming per calendar quarter. 50 hours of prime time and children's programming per quarter. And 37 and a half hours of any programming between 6:00 a.m. and midnight.
Now, good news, as of January 1st of 2021, so just a few months ago, the number of markets was expanded. So it expanded from the top 60 TV markets to the top 70. We added 10 more. And we will add 10 more next January. And we will keep doing that until we achieve the top 100 market areas.
And then after that there will be reevaluation to see if that expansion should keep going. So the amount of audio description is ever expanding, even as of just recently.
That all totals about 7 hours per week of audio description on each of these networks. And more often than not, there's much more audio description; it just doesn't count towards our particular rules that we set out. So oftentimes they provide much more audio description than our rules require.
But there's also interesting news. Every 3 years the FCC updates the list of audio description networks, the nonbroadcast networks. We update what are the most popular, right, we don't want everyone to be stuck on the old getting audio description only on the old not popular anymore networks. So that has been updated, and starting July 1, 2021, so just a few months from now, the top networks that will have to be providing audio description will be TLC, HGTV, Hallmark, History, and TBS. So there's a few of them that have fallen off of the top networks and there are a few that have been added. So that will be happening July 1.
In previous years we were calling audio description at the FCC being video description. Our rules called audio description video description. To add to the confusion, some people commonly refer to audio description as descriptive video service, and there's even a few other names and acronyms that audio description falls under.
As part of the rules that expanded next year the number of markets for audio description, we also changed the terminology that we use. We essentially do not use video description anymore. We use the word "audio description." So hopefully it will lessen the amount of confusion in the market. And that was a recommendation that was brought to us by the Disability Advisory Committee for us to stop using the term "video description." More on the FCC's Disability Advisory Committee later in the program.
So let me jump down to the next bullet point: Closed captioning on TV. Closed captioning on TV, as I'm sure you all are familiar with, displays the audio portion of a television program. It displays it as text on the TV screen, and it provides a critical link to people who are Deaf and hard of hearing, so that they can get the auditory information off of the video program. That would include news and entertainment and whatever else information is on there.
Congress requires that video programming distributors, which are cable operators and broadcasters and satellite distributors, they require them to provide captioning for all English and Spanish language programming that is not specifically exempt from our rules. To be honest, the amount of programming that is exempt from the closed captioning rule is so small that I'm not even really going to go into it. But needless to say, almost everything on TV, cable, broadcast, however you're getting it, traditional video programming, almost all of that has to be closed captioned.
Now, the rules around that also include caption quality standards. And it also includes guidance for the video programming distributors and programmers. Let me just talk quickly about the quality rules laid out in 2014. They require that captions be accurate, synchronous, and complete, and properly placed.
So very quickly. Accuracy of course everybody can understand why you would want the words on the screen to be accurate to what is actually being spoken.
Accuracy also includes nonverbal information. That is not observable on the screen. Such as who is speaking, like if someone is speaking off screen, they need to give a visual indication of that. The existence of music, sound effects, audience reactions if it's an audience-participation show. And they have to do that to the greatest extent possible and you have to take into consideration the nature of the program.
Synchronous is a big deal as well. If the words being spoken on the screen are not in sync with what's being displayed with the captions, certainly problematic. It can cause a lot of confusion. So they have to be synchronous with what's being said.
They also have to be displayed at a speed that can be read by the viewer. Sometimes I speak a little too quickly. The captioner will do their best to try to present the information at a speed that can be read by the viewers.
Completeness is also very important. Captions have to run from the beginning of the program to the end of the program. To the full extent possible. But this has come up quite often, where a commercial begins and the captions just cut off and you don't actually find out who won the award or, you know, or the cliffhanger or whatever. So it's very important that they keep those captions going.
And then properly placed. It's very important that the captions don't block the face of the person speaking or block a bunch of important information that's on the screen on the bottom. So you're not allowed to block the important visual content on the screen, including graphics and credits, and any information that's essential to understand the programming. So that's one thing that's important.
And of course the captions can't run off the side of the screen and things like that.
Those are the caption quality standards, and the rules distinguish between rerecorded programs, live programs, and near-live programs. And the rules explain how the standards apply to each of those different types of programs, recognizing that live programming has greater hurdles. Near-live programming has something in between. And that's why you see a difference between CNN's live news and the difficulty that can occur when trying to provide a perfect caption series for that show versus a prerecorded sitcom. I think the expectations for a prerecorded sitcom would be much higher.
So let me go down to closed captions on the internet, which is fairly straightforward. The internet closed captioning rules only apply if the video programming in question was shown on TV in the U.S. with captions. The short answer, or the short version of the internet closed captioning rules is, if it was shown on TV, with captions, and now it's being shown on the internet, then it needs to have captions. And captions need to be the same quality, they need to deliver those captions to the same extent that they were delivered on the TV.
That is for full length programming. Full length programming of course is shows that are substantially in their entirety shown on the internet. Those have to be captioned. Video clips, so the internet, as we all know, is full of short little segments where they're taking content from various places. Video clips where there is an excerpt of the full-length program that is posted online, our rules require that the programming distributor, if they're posting that program on their own website or they're own app, then they would have to include the captions. However, the captions are not required if those clips are shown on a third-party website or a third-party app.
And just to make it really clear, consumer-generated media on the internet, think YouTube or home videos that are posted on the old internet somewhere, those do not have any captioning requirements unless they were shown on TV with captions in the past.
Movies as well. Movies shown on the internet, there's no requirement for captions under our rules unless those movies were shown on TV with captions.
Let me jump down to the captioning settings. This obligation is focused on the device that you are using to watch the video programming. Devices that receive and play back video programming are required to support a captioning standard, CEA 708. They have a certain number of features that are used for displaying the closed captioning in the programming. Those features include adjusting of the color of the font and the window and the background of that and the opacity of that text in the window. And they need to give you some control over the various types of fonts and character edge attributes so that you can make the captions look the way that is most easy to read for you. They need to include multiple language tracks and identify easy reader tracks. And activation of closed captioning: Captioning appearance and previewing in the settings. And also I think one of the most important things is once you set the settings for your captions, they need to be able to follow you as you move from one program to another. Nothing is worse than having to go back through the settings menu and adjust your captions for every time you watch a program.
This is really for any device that receives play backs and records programming, video programming. And for devices that interconnect with other devices that are required to either render, either like take the data for closed captioning and render it on the screen, or to pass that closed captioning information on through to other device, other output devices that will then render the program.
When it's passing it through, it has to pass everything through to make sure that whatever device is discombobulating the captions, that it can do it fully to the standards and functionalities that we described above.
The devices that are covered, these are all designed to receive in play back video programming, screens of any size, as well as devices that do not have screens at all, such as set top boxes from your cable company.
Covered devices are not limited to the devices which receive the program via internet protocol, but they also include traditional television receivers and those that have screens that are less than 13 inches in size and, you know, DVD and Blu-ray players and any device compatible for recording video programming.
So closed captioning, done.
Now we'll go to TV, set top box controls, menus, and program guides. And please, if there's a question, someone just throw it in the chat and we'll try to address it as we just move right along.
TV set top box controls, menus, and program guides, also known as accessible user interfaces for persons who are blind or visually impaired. This is for devices that play video programming. We have two rules around this, and the distinction is, you should know about the distinction but they're not really that important. They cover digital apparatus and they cover separately navigation devices. I'll talk about each category. Just keep in mind in this context we're talking about accessible user interfaces for people who are blind or visually impaired so that they're able to operate and use all or nearly all of the functions of a device that plays video programming. So this includes like the settings, menus, channel selection, start and stop and fast forward and so on.
Most of the time this is accomplished through a speech synthesizer built in to the box or the device.
It should be noted that there are a few functions that are special: The closed captioning function and the audio description function. Those are really special and those are required to have an easy to operate way to turn those on. Something like a button, key, or icon. To make it easy. There are slightly different rules for these.
Everything not on a cable satellite or fiber plan is digital apparatus: Televisions, smart TVs, tablets, your smartphone can play video programming, also all of those removable media players, things like Apple TVs, Roku devices, Amazon Firesticks, just computers broadly can play video programming over the internet, smart refrigerators, if the smart refrigerator can play programming. And those headrests in the back of the car, the rear entertainment systems as they're called. If those things can play video programming, then they have to be accessible. The menus and settings have to be accessible. That's required by our rules.
The accessibility functions apply to the device and any preinstalled apps that come with those devices. Preinstalled apps or video players. And sometimes the preinstalled apps are in the hundreds or even thousands. All of those apps if they're preinstalled or if the manufacturer directs you to go and download that particular app, then that is a covered app and it needs to be accessible.
Now, all of these devices have to have these accessible features built in to them if they were manufactured after December 20th, 2016. So that's kind of everything. There's a life cycle to digital apparatus that play video programming, and we'll probably get to a full saturation point, which is great. You can just buy these things in the store. The same Roku device you buy in the store has the same accessibility features built into it. Most people never turn them on, but they're just in there.
Second category is navigation devices. These are your set top box that comes from your cable company or your satellite company. And they have accessibility requirements similar to the other category that we discussed, but they're really much more — the rules are really much more focused on getting access to the program guide, which is that huge list of all the programs, and more importantly, because you're in some sort of relationship with these companies, they also say our rules also say that the accessible set top box cannot be an additional cost for a person who is blind or vision impaired. So if you need an accessible set top box, you cannot charge more for that.
Now I'll pass it on to Suzy to talk about access.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: Before we do that, if we can go back to the previous slide, I think John Waldo had three questions for us. So if you could please turn on John's video and audio so that way John can ask his questions. I believe the host needs to do that.
JOHN WALDO: Okay. Am I there? I'm not on video, apparently, but that's okay. I didn't exactly primp for this today.
I find that notion about clear rules for when captioning is required to be murky. As you explained it, it is if a program has been shown on television in the United States. Is that correct?
WILL SCHELL: With captions.
JOHN WALDO: With captions. Okay.
WILL SCHELL: On TV, yes.
JOHN WALDO: What is becoming fuzzier and fuzzier, it seems like, is what's shown on television amounts to. Because take Netflix, Amazon, for example, all this stuff that is streamed to a television set. Does that count as shown on television for purposes of the captioning requirements?
WILL SCHELL: Great question. It does not. Netflix and Amazon are streaming services. I totally agree with you, it is getting harder to distinguish between traditional broadcast and cable services and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. It's getting very hard to distinguish.
Right now our rules are living in an era, a bygone era of 2010 when streaming services were clearly distinct properties. But yeah. It's a good question.
JOHN WALDO: So does the program essentially have to be shown on either a broadcast network or a cable network in order to fall under the captioning rules?
WILL SCHELL: That's right.
JOHN WALDO: Okay. That's the first question. That's the big one.
Two little ones. Do song lyrics have to be captioned?
WILL SCHELL: Yes. The bottom line is yes. I definitely recognize that oftentimes they are not. Sometimes it is hard for the captioner to, if it's a live program, it's hard for them to necessarily know all of the words or be able to hear all the words.
The short answer is yes. There is some consideration that has to be given, like you wouldn't want them to caption the lyrics of a song being played if there's dialogue going on, if it was going to conflict with that. But otherwise, generally, yes. And we would be happy to have complaints filed with us about those kinds of issues, because they're really important.
JOHN WALDO: Okay. And the third one, a relatively minor one, you sometimes see foreign language programming that is subtitled. But they're not captioned. So when it reverts from foreign language to English, there is no captioning at all. Have you dealt with that issue?
WILL SCHELL: Yeah. And other people, Suzy and Eliot may be more familiar with this than I am. My understanding is that the captioning has to be in the auditory language that's being done, if it's in English and Spanish. And the subtitles, right, is a translation of that audio. They're just different than captions. So the subtitles just operate differently than closed captions so they wouldn't have all of the other requirements that come along with closed captions like the background noises.
JOHN WALDO: Okay. So that would then not meet the criteria of something shown on television with captions because it is shown with subtitles, not captions.
WILL SCHELL: That's a good question. Eliot, do you have thoughts?
ELIOT GREENWALD: Yeah. This is Eliot. I'll explain this a bit.
If the program is predominantly a program let's say in French that's shown with English subtitles but in a few pieces of some of the dialogue they say a few words of English or maybe a sentence of English, where they're just little bits of English or Spanish even because Spanish programming is required to be captioned also, it's still considered French programming. So there would be no captioning requirement.
That would be different if it were a bilingual program, with a lot of English, French, or Spanish, that would be different. But if it's just little bits and pieces of English or Spanish, that's not the predominant language in the program so it's not required to be captioned.
JOHN WALDO: Thank you.
WILL SCHELL: Great questions. And I think everyone here really appreciates having the dialogue. This is a room filled with really smart attorneys and legal advocates, so we're really interested in having a dialogue.
With that, I'll pass it on to Suzy for the super important emergency access information.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: Thank you, Will. I absolutely agree, we welcome all of your questions and thoughts, because many of you already know a lot of this content as attorneys yourself who specialize in disability rights. But we are certainly happy to provide this very high-level overview of rules and requirements, and then we're looking forward to hearing your questions.
The last area of focus for the Disability Rights Office is emergency access. The first topic there has to do with calling or contacting 911. The FCC does not have any jurisdiction over the public safety answering points or PSAPs as they are called. Those are the 911 call centers who are taking your call. But we regulate the wireless carriers. So with that in mind, we have requirements for those carriers. First of all, thanks to the emergency access advisory committee from a number of years ago that was founded pursuant to the CVAA, we received recommendations for text-to-911. We had implemented requirements for carriers to deliver text messages to 911 call centers. If the PSAP couldn't receive the text messages, then they had to send a bounce back message to the caller. Certainly calling is the best first method if possible, whether phone or relay services or TTY for direct communication. But there are new methods cropping up as well, like text-to-911 or real-time text, as you already heard described by Eliot, which is the newer solution for the IP-based network. We are no longer finding that TTYs are compatible with these IP networks who are transitioning over to RTT, which is still in the process of rolling out.
Also down the road we're looking to see Next Generation 911 where you will have all types of media on the same platform. So you would then have data, video, voice, files and so forth all would be able to be communicated directly to the PSAP operator through NG911. We're very excited about that, it would end up being much more accessible for all of attorney in addition to people who can't communicate by voice for a variety of reasons. There could be people in an active shooter situation or domestic violence situation wherein they would need to use an alternate form of communication to contact emergency services, like moving from voice calling to text calling as part of the same call. That's an RTT function and also would be a function of NG911 services. This is another thing we're deeply involved with as well from the previous slide, implementing widgets for television platforms so that you could potentially stream those things to a Braille display and the captioning would be made more accessible. Those are exciting developments there. The they won't be happening soon, but NGTV is on the horizon.
Access to 911, we have a text-to-911 registry. This is voluntary for public safety answering points to submit their regional capabilities for communicating via text, whether that be real-time text or SMS or what have you. And that is available on our website. I also see a few states still have not implemented text-to-911 solutions, but there is a list there in that registry to find where you have those solutions. If you need help with that, reach out to us. But it is a key way of getting emergency assistance. We really prioritize that at our agency.
Second item on this slide is the emergency alert system. We have on an annual basis a test that is transmitted, usually to your television where you may see the broadcast that this is a test and it's only a test. This is something that can be activated and used by the President of the United States to alert the entire nation about impending emergencies. Fortunately we have never had to transmit a live actual alert, but we conduct annual tests to ensure that that system functions well. And there are accessibility rules that surround that. The next test will be this August. We did not conduct a test in 2020 due to the pandemic, but we do also want all of your help in observing those tests and determining how accessible those were and whether there are gaps. There are requirements for those EAS tests and messages and for EAS alerts in general. First, for the visual portion of the message, that the text must be displayed at the top of the television screen or where it will not otherwise interfere with other visual information, like closed captioning or other important visual information on the screen.
It must be displayed in a manner that is easily read and understood. For example, the speed of the text going across the screen can't be too quick, the size has to be sufficient that a viewer would be able to read it, and color contrast needs to be sufficient for readability. In the past we've seen some almost incomprehensible messages based on the way it was being displayed and we've relied on a lot of your factor that.
Second, it also cannot overlap with itself. So you need to have the text that is able to be read in its entirety on the screen without overlapping or interfering with itself, and not being cut off by part of the screen. You need to be able to see the entire message on the television screen.
The last requirement, it needs to be shown in its entirety at least one time for any given message.
The audio portion of the EAS warnings must be shown or played, the audio portion at least once in its entirety in order to ensure that it's accessible to people who are blind or have low vision.
So please, if you are able to monitor those tests, please do reach out and let us know what you see. It would certainly help if you could get any photos or video that you could submit with us as well in the event that you identify any concerns, and we will be distributing information about how to file comments and get that feedback to us on the record in terms of the photo and video later on this year.
Moving on to wireless emergency alerts. Rather than those on your television screen, these are notifications going to your mobile devices. Generally we require accessibility of those types of alerts as well.
We recently adopted rules that require that those messages be on your phone for at least 24 hours after that message is received. or after you delete it, for example, so that you then would have sufficient time to be able to read it and review it. That would be helpful for accessibility purposes as well.
Also want to emphasize about wireless emergency alerts, if you are not connected to a cellular network, if your phone is in Wi-Fi only mode, for example, or airplane mode, you will not receive a WEA alert. This is also a voluntary system. So certainly check with your carrier to see if it has WEA capabilities.
And the final topic here on emergency access is emergency information on television. The FCC's rules require broadcasters and cable operators to make certain emergency information accessible to people who are Deaf and hard of hearing and blind or visually impaired. Those rules specify certain information about emergency situations must be provided in both auditory and visual formats.
So now what qualifies as emergency information on television? Emergency information is something that is intended to help protect life, health, safety, and property. For example, this can be inclusive of immediate weather situations, like hurricanes or tornadoes or flash floods, earthquakes, heavy snows and the like. Wildfires, those types of things.
The second area would be community-based situations. For example, the pandemic. Widespread power outages. Industrial exposures or explosions. Civil disorder. Toxic gas releases. School closures that are resulting from any of those emergencies as well.
So with that in mind, that is where our rules for emergency information on television kick in. If it is about those types of situations, we require accessible information to be shared about the specific details of the areas that are affected by that emergency information, whether it be the name of a town or an area, there needs to be some delineation of where. If there's any evacuation, details about routes. Any locations of shelters or directions for sheltering in place, instructions on how you can secure your personal property, any road closures, and how you can get aid or relief assistance.
With all that in mind, how is that information to be made accessible in this context? For people who are Deaf and hard of hearing, you want to ensure that all auditory information about that information must be provided using either captioning or other methods of visual presentation, like open captioning, screen crawls, or screen scrolls of text on the screen, and video programming distributors must ensure that the emergency information is not blocking captioning or blocked by captioning, that those two things should not interfere with one another or interfere with graphics that are pertinent to the emergency alert.
States and local officials often do provide ASL interpreting services during televised emergency announcements and press conferences and the like. To the extent that that service is provided, the FCC encourages that the video programming distributor and the video programmer ensure that the interpreters are visible on the screen at all times for the benefit of those who use ASL.
The FCC, however, does not have specific rules about this, but the FCC encourages that, and we have seen that the National Association of the Deaf has been very active with the various states and federal officials to ensure that interpreters are being provided and are present in the shot on the screen there. So we're very appreciative of their work on that area as well.
We do have language in our items that strongly encourages that interpreters be included in the shot.
For people who are blind or visually impaired, we have a separate set of requirements. Visual information must be made accessible through audio description for either regularly scheduled newscasts or a newscast that interrupts regularly scheduled programming. For example, if there is a visual crawl, there must be an audio tone that would then cue the viewer to go to the secondary audio stream to get access to that in audio format. And that secondary audio stream must also deliver the emergency information that supersedes the regular programming that would otherwise be shown on there and must have that message delivered in its entirety at least twice to ensure that people have access to that information on the secondary audio channel because they have to switch over after hearing that tone.
There may be instances where emergencies affect the broadcast station itself or a nonbroadcast network or distributor. In those instances, it may be impossible for them to make emergency information accessible if they are affected by that.
There is one more aspect to this that we cover for emergency information on television, and that has to do with second screen devices and when someone is utilizing their second screen device and have their own subscriber, for example Comcast at home, where you may have a second screen device that you use with your broadcaster. We have rules about emergency information of there to ensure that on those second screen devices that information is also available in accessible ways.
Will, if you wanted to add something, please.
WILL SCHELL: No, not really. I mean, you nailed it. The information that shows up on the second audio channel, the accessible audio portion of the emergency information, I just wanted to add in just what you said, it has to be passed through to your tablet or phone or whatever you're using to watch secondary screen. It's limited, just what you said, to the cable company that you're watching, being on the same network that they're providing, and it has to also be specifically linear programming or just regular television, scheduled television.
So just to make clear, the emergency information does not have to show up if you're watching TV in a Starbucks or if you are watching prerecorded or downloaded information from your network. It has to be like live, real TV. So anyway, I just wanted to add that in there.
Oh, and let me — sorry.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: Thanks, Will. Yeah, yeah, please go ahead. I thought you were turning it over to Eliot.
WILL SCHELL: I am. Let me click the next slide and ask Eliot to come up and I'll pass it over to him. Looks like we're down to 15 minutes left, so I just wanted to give everyone a time warning.
ELIOT GREENWALD: Hi, this is Eliot again. I'm going to talk about the first two bullets on this slide and then pass it on to Suzy after that.
The first is access info. This is basically a listserv. We send out emails a few times a month to let people know about disability issues before the FCC. That would include proceedings before the Disability Rights Office, where we will let you know about notices of proposed rulemakings, orders, reports and orders, or orders on various issues and let you know what we issue.
We also include in the listserv when we send out notices of other proceed beings, nonDRO proceedings where there's a disability issue where the Commission may be seeking comment or making a decision that includes a disability issue.
And for anybody who is not subscribing to AccessInfo, it's easy to subscribe. Just send an email to [email protected] and type somewhere in your email, either in the, preferably in the subject line, but you could put it in the body, just put in the word "subscribe" and you will be subscribed to AccessInfo. That's [email protected].
Secondly we list here the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program, adopted as part of the CVAA in 2010, where Congress authorized the FCC to distribute up to $10 million to people who are deafblind so that they can basically cover the cost of equipment that is used to access telecommunications or advanced communications services. This would be basically for low-income people who are deafblind. And the Commission has described low income as four times the federal poverty rate for the location where the person lives, and the reason why it's four times the federal poverty rate is because of the higher expenses of people who are deafblind. And this is distributed through 56 programs in the 50 states and U.S. territories including the District of Columbia. And the Commission certifies each of those state programs and then divides the money among the various state programs for the purposes of the distribution.
And I will now turn over the floor to Suzy for the next several bullet points to on this slide.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: Thank you, Eliot.
I wanted to preface my remarks by saying that engagement is really so important to us. We very much prioritize that in order to ensure that our rules are working. We value all of your engagement with us to let us know what is happening out there. So all of these on this slide are the different ways that we work to engage.
Sorry. My computer just went to sleep for a second, but it's back. So we're getting close to the end of our session, so I'll hurry through. This sorry about that.
This slide again, not in any particular order here, frankly we put in an order of how we were going to take turns, all talking through it here, and all of these are equally important to the Disability Rights Office and the FCC.
Our ASL consumer line services is one of our flagship programs at the FCC to receive your calls directly through ASL. You can reach out to us, and we have a full-time call agent taking calls in American Sign Language answering questions, helping people file complaints, or giving any information that people would need. Sometimes we do make references to other agencies as well in order to ensure that consumers know where to go to get assistance. It is a flagship program for us. The phone number is included on our next and last slide.
The video library as well is a very important resource for providing access to lots of information in American Sign Language. We have a page that lists all of our various ASL videos on a plethora of topics that have to do with FCC, not only focusing on accessibility-related information, but broadband and other things as well.
And finally, consumer and small business guides is another large repository of information for any and everyone. There's a whole host of different topics that are covered there, and I know we've covered a lot of information today. You can find more resources on any of those topics on our website.
I'm going to turn it over to Will now to finish up our list of engagement initiatives. Thank you.
WILL SCHELL: Right. So I'm covering complaints. I'm the team lead of the complaints department.
The bottom line with complaints is that we want them. We want complaints. I've been to the tenBroek conference many times, about 10 years. And one thing that I'm always surprised is that the very active and engaged disability rights attorneys, population that comes to the tenBroek conference, oftentimes don't know that the FCC takes complaints. I think you might be interested, informal complaints is one way, and we also have a request for dispute assistance, RDA. Both types of complaints can be filed by going to FCC.gov/complaints. Informal complaints are what you would expect from a general complaint system. Consumers or advocates on behalf of consumers can file complaints with us, and we will take that basically on anything that you've heard about today, describing an accessibility issue related to video programming or communication services or equipment. Those are the types of complaints that we'll take.
And if you encounter an accessibility barrier in one of those categories, you should send them our way.
We serve that complaint on to the covered entity, who then has about 30 days to respond. And normally if there's a problem that they've identified, they also have to explain or describe how they're going to take steps to ensure, to fix that accessibility complaint problem.
The RDA process is a little bit different than traditional complaints. You file a complaint. It is specifically related to only accessibility of telephones, telephone services, and the telephone networks. So a consumer or an advocate can file a request for dispute assistance regarding devices or services for telephones, and we will open up another 30-day complaint, but in this case, we will be directly involved in assisting the consumer and covered entity to try to resolve the accessibility issue. The consumer and covered entity, if they cannot resolve the accessibility concern, then the consumer after the 30-day period is up would have the opportunity to file an informal complaint with our enforcement bureau.
That information, once again, I'm just going to hit the — Suzy is giving me a time warning. We have 4 minutes so this will go real fast. We definitely want your complaints. I'm glad we mentioned that.
Chairman's AAA. If you sign up for [email protected], you'll be notified when the chairman's awards for advancement in accessibility is announced. Every year there is awards given out by our chairman or chairwoman, and they recognize technical advancements that have been made to communication services or tools for people with disabilities. It's a really good opportunity to find those real gems of the year that have made a big difference in people's lives.
Going on to the Disability Advisory Committee. I'm going to switch slides. Disability Advisory Committee is just what it sounds like. FCC has an advisory committee filled with organizations representing people with disabilities and organizations representing the industries of telecommunications and video programming and other various industries that kind of fall in to the FCC's purview. And this committee gets together and talks about the hard questions for disability access, and they provide us with recommendations on those things. They give us recommendations and information about how the FCC should be kind of progressing in various disability-related matters that come up.
I won't go into detail. Needless to say the DAC talks about all of the issues that we talked about today in this presentation.
The next DAC meeting is supposed to be on May 27th. Sign up on AccessInfo if you want to get a notification. You can watch it live broadcast on the internet.
I'm going to pass it off to Eliot. If there's any room for questions, we've got 2 minutes.
ELIOT GREENWALD: I'm going to quickly go over this slide, which is basically how to contact us and check things out with us. So first I'm going to mention that the online complaint form is one way you can file complaints. And the address for that is www.fcc.gov/accessibilitycomplaints. That takes you right to the online complaint form.
The general accessibility page on the FCC's website is www.fcc.gov/accessibility.
Those are two ways to get to our website. If you can't remember any of that, just go to the general FCC website FCC.gov, and then you can navigate to those two particular pages.
There's also we have an email address, which will then, people check that email box every day and forward it to the appropriate people. Very easy. [email protected]. Suzy talked about the video phone that we have for those who want to have a conversation in ASL with somebody at the FCC. That's (844) 432-2275.
And then we have a voice phone of course which is (202) 418-2517.
And lastly I already talked about how to subscribe to AccessInfo. We are right at 12:30, but it looks like there's something in the chat, which I will read out: If automatic captioning reaches acceptable quality and therefore becomes essentially cost free, do you anticipate that captioning requirements will broaden. That's from John Waldo.
I will start, that and if Suzy or Will want to chime in, I encourage that. But I'll first mention that of course it won't be entirely cost free because there will be costs associated with use of a captioning engine. But it would reduce the cost of captioning considerably. And of course we would have to look at that. The Commission would have to look at that in a rulemaking proceeding, whether to enhance certain requirements, broaden other requirements, and so on. That would have to be addressed in a rulemaking proceeding.
I'll leave it at that, but if Suzy or Will want to add to that, go ahead.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: I just wanted to quickly add, and thank you for that great question. Our rules are technology neutral. So in this case, it doesn't matter if we're talking about ASR or human captioners. We expect the quality, as described earlier. But you make a good point about broadening the availability of captioning.
At this point television captioning is pretty much 100% required. It really is more about internet programming, and we are confined by the language of the law. The 21st century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which restricts our authority only to programming previously shown on television with captioning. So we have limited jurisdiction in this case. We do not have any flexibility to further expand our jurisdiction on that. We have at least some exemptions for television captioning, and we could look into potentially eliminating some of those. That might be a possibility.
With that said, I want to thank everyone for all of your time and participation here. Eliot and Will, thank you. Our host, our interpreters, our captioner, thank you so much.
Please don't be strangers here. Reach out to us at the FCC if you have any follow-up questions. We did not expect for us to go the entire hour and a half here, and I'm sorry we don't have a lot of time left over for questions, but thank you so much again.
Any closing remarks from either of you?
WILL SCHELL: No. Thanks, everyone.
ELIOT GREENWALD: Thanks, everyone.
SUZY ROSEN SINGLETON: All right. Thank you, everybody. Have a great afternoon. We'll join you for the subsequent proceedings here at the conference.
Bye.