The FCC shouldn’t mandate what specific functions in...
The FCC shouldn’t mandate what specific functions in a device should be accessible in its implementation of rules from the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) governing user interfaces and programming guides, said Dish and EchoStar in a…
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joint ex parte filing Thursday (http://bit.ly/18MWUlZ). “It is not necessary for the Commission to mandate any particular functions in order to ensure baseline accessibility,” said Dish and EchoStar. CEA and consumer groups representing the vision-impaired recommended earlier this week that the commission require manufacturers to make accessible all 11 “essential functions” from a list created by the Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee (CD Aug 20 p15). If the FCC follows that recommendation, it should clarify that the accessibility requirements will apply only for functions on the list that are “native” to the device, said the joint filing. The DBS providers also want power functions and volume buttons excluded from the list, along with “Configuration -- Setup” and “Display Configuration Info.” The latter two “represent broad, umbrella categories of functions that reach beyond the narrow, more easily identifiable” device functions targeted by the language in the CVAA, said the filing. The agency should also try to preserve flexibility in any rules governing the closed caption function, and not require a “single step” process for activating captions, said EchoStar and Dish. The commission should also give companies flexibility to determine “how to ensure that an appropriate selection of accessible navigation devices” is available to visually impaired consumers, said the companies. If the FCC requires companies to provide “accessible versions of all of the classes of devices they make available” and doesn’t allow them to recoup the cost, providers should be allowed to “apply a per-user charge to all customers” to fund the R&D necessary to create the devices, the filing said.