The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and...
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB) complained to the FCC that makers of wireless devices have a long way to go to make them more readily usable by people with impaired…
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vision. Both groups filed in docket 10-213 offering comments for a biennial FCC report to Congress on implementation of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). Both said in comments posted by the FCC Monday that “gaps” remain. “While industry has begun to demonstrate, through both words and actions, that it is largely taking seriously the access obligations of equipment manufacturers and service providers imposed by the Communications Act, many significant gaps remain,” AFB told the commission (http://bit.ly/1r0Vyk4). That few complaints have been filed at the FCC doesn’t mean there are no problems, the group said. Consumers continue to “struggle” to find accessible handsets “and there continues to be a failure at critical points along the sales, marketing and customer service chain to be aware of and communicate accurate information about accessible features and functions,” AFB said. Devices are better than they were but problems remain, ACB said. All features that are part of a phone should be accessible using screen reader and screen magnification programs, ACB said (http://bit.ly/1uSVgvG). “On [A]ndroid, even with the latest operating system, a person who is blind encounters significant challenges in independently enabling TalkBack, Android’s default screen reader,” ACB said. “There is still too much leeway for carriers to customize the [A]ndroid operating system, and in doing so, leaving TalkBack out.” CTIA said the FCC report must reflect the work the wireless industry is doing to comply with the CVAA. CTIA members “have gone further to undertake voluntary collaborative efforts in the spirit of the Act that have contributed to the widespread availability of, and information about, accessible wireless products and services,” the group said (http://bit.ly/1siqVYE).