The FCC reminded all video providers, given the many recent natural disasters,...
The FCC reminded all video providers, given the many recent natural disasters, that they must make emergency information accessible to those who can’t hear or see well. Such commission rules apply to TV stations, cable operators, DBS services and all…
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other subscription-video providers, a public notice Friday said. Four pages long, with a consumer complaint form at the end, it’s longer than some other recent FCC notices reminding industry of regulatory obligations but similar to previous reminders on this subject in years past. It said it was released “in light of the flooding in the south, the tornadoes in various parts of the country, and the already active storm season.” An FCC spokesman noted that there are about 36 million Americans with hearing loss and 25 million with what he called significant vision loss. Friday’s notice “is our yearly reminder to video programming distributors about their accessibility obligations, issued to ensure that television services be accessible to all Americans with disabilities,” he said. There are “no exemptions” to the information-accessibility rule, with broadcasters required to comply no matter what type of technology they use, the regulator said. “We stress that the need to comply with section 79.2” of FCC rules “and make the critical details of emergency information accessible is not always limited to the immediate geographic areas affected by the emergency because, for example, information about the relocation of individuals outside that immediate geographic area also falls within the rule’s mandate,” the notice said. That may include “providing information to non-impacted areas sheltering individuals displaced by a large-scale disaster, such as that which occurred recently with the tornado devastation of Joplin, Missouri or in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck the south. In these cases the need to comply with section 79.2 has extended to areas throughout the country where evacuees were temporarily re-located.” There also are times when emergency information of national import is of local “concern,” and should be made accessible, the FCC said. For those who can’t see, the video portion of emergency information that interrupts regularly scheduled programming must be accessible, the notice said. Representatives of the broadcast, cable and DBS industries had no comment on those companies’ efforts to make all alerts accessible.