FCC to Impose Quality Rules on Captions, But Not Numerical Standards, Says FCC Official
An upcoming FCC order on closed caption quality will broadly require TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors to have high-quality captions on all captioned programming, but will defer the question of quantitative standards for measuring compliance to a further rulemaking, said an agency official and a public interest official. The action on closed caption quality is tentatively set for the FCC’s Feb. 20 meeting (CD Feb 6 p5). Putting off the imposition of the numerical standards suggested by consumer groups is in line with broadcasters’ filing on the issue, but deferring quantitative standards wouldn’t keep new captioning rules from having “a substantial impact” on the industry, said Assistant Clinical Professor Blake Reid of the University of Colorado’s Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic, which is representing Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired (TDI). The increased attention to captioning due to such a rulemaking would be a huge improvement, he said.
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Imposing the rules without requiring specific quantitative standards would be similar to what the FCC has done in other 21st Century Video Accessibility Act proceedings, said Davis Wright attorney Maria Browne, who represents clients in CVAA-related matters. In other CVAA proceedings, the commission has issued “broad performance objectives” and then given discretion to programming distributors as to how they'll come into compliance, she said.
The rules in the upcoming closed captioning order will require video programmers to provide captions that accurately reflect the content of the programming, run for the length of the programs, are synchronized to the video, and are placed correctly on the screen, said an FCC official. TDI and other consumer groups flagged those four categories as “areas where problems are widespread.” Since the order doesn’t impose specific measurements for those qualities, it holds programmers to a standard of “reasonableness” in complying with them, said the agency official. The Media Bureau didn’t comment.
The quality standards will apply to all the captions that video programmers provide, including those created through electronic newsroom technique, the FCC official said. In ENT, captions for live newscasts are created by running the pre-written script of the newscast as the closed captions. Though the consumer groups had asked the FCC to consider doing away with ENT, broadcasters hard to preserve it. The upcoming February order instead imposes the same higher-quality standards to it as other captions, said the FCC official. The completeness standard could pose the biggest difficulty for broadcasters using ENT, since any surprise event that happens counter to the script wouldn’t be included, the official said.
Along with how to quantify standards for captions, the FNPRM will also seek comment on possible enforcement levels for those who violate caption rules. The February agenda item also includes a declaratory ruling, which will clarify the commission’s stance on many smaller issues related to the captioning rules, the official said.
Some issues in the February agenda item are still in flux, the FCC official said, and it may undergo some changes. One issue that may or may not be included in the FNPRM is whether real-time captioning -- the stenography-like technique by which live events are captioned -- can be used to provide captions for prerecorded programs, said the FCC official. Other aspects of the proposed rules could also change before the open meeting, the official said. “Now that the commission’s attention is focused on this, sorting out these details is going to happen over the coming months,” said Reid. (mtayloe@warren-news.com)