CEA and its members “are concerned about what we're hearing”...

p3) that DVD and Blu-ray players would have to pass onto users video descriptions of emergency on-screen crawl information in TV-station and multichannel video programming distributors’ secondary audio program (SAP) channels. Concerning a report that the further notice tentatively finds MVPDs’ programming sent to tablets, smartphones and other devices also would face apparatus emergency programming accessibility rules, Kearney said that may not “necessarily square with the statute.” The FCC is conducting the proceeding under the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. Advocates for the hearing-impaired continued to tell the agency the act requires such MVPD Internet Protocol content to pass on such SAP channels. Such groups said the forthcoming order should find, as a previous order on MVPD and TV station’s IP captioning found, that fixed media players fall under the act’s rules. “CEA’s argument that Section 303(u)(1) should be interpreted inconsistently in the emergency information proceeding” from the order requiring traditional TV content be captioned when put online should be rejected, said two groups, a professor at a school that teaches the hearing impaired and their lawyers. “If the Commission seeks to exclude playback-only fixed media players from the scope of the emergency information and video description rules, it must do so pursuant to some other method, such as its general waiver authority.” Officials at Gallaudet University’s Technology Access Program, Georgetown University’s Institute of Public Representation and National Association of the Deaf met with aides to Chairman Julius Genachowski, and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing met with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 12-107 (http://bit.ly/YYq25q), where CEA has discussed its opposition to the IP captioning order’s inclusion of removable media players (http://bit.ly/10J9ZfU).