Regulation No Substitute for Cooperation, O'Rielly Tells New FCC DAC
The FCC Disability Advisory Committee got started Tuesday, holding its inaugural, mostly introductory, meeting at agency headquarters. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly cautioned the group that new regulation is often not the best approach to making communications more accessible.
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“The digital economy and the current state of Internet communications exists because of cooperation and technological advancement rather than government mandates and regulatory fiats,” O’Rielly said. A “significant factor of reasonability” should be part of any recommendations DAC makes, O’Rielly said. “You are obligated to consider the costs of any recommendations on those ultimately paying -- the American consumer.”
DAC members also need to have reasonable expectations of what can be expected of any technology in a limited time period, O’Rielly said. “While it may seem as though software providers, equipment manufacturers, video providers or others should be able to deliver a specific function to improve disability communications, [DAC members should] do the necessary homework to find out the facts, including the time needed to research, development and marketing and the relative costs,” he said.
DAC must appreciate FCC authority is not unlimited, O’Rielly said. “We have limited authority over the Internet and the applications layer,” he said. “I will be hesitant to approve any recommendation that seeks to involve the commission in the highly competitive applications marketplace.”
Karen Peltz Strauss, deputy chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, assured DAC members that under Chairman Tom Wheeler, the FCC is very focused on disability issues. “We've done this dance before, we're going to do it again,” she said. She ticked off recent developments: requiring captioning on TV shows that are streamed on the Internet; reinstating video description rules; mandating that carriers transmit emergency texts to 911; emergency access on TV; creating a national program for the low-income people who are deaf and blind to get communications equipment. “The list goes on and on, and as the saying goes, we have just begun to fight,” she said.
The DAC must focus on getting things done, Strauss said. “We want recommendations fast,” she said. “This chairman wants to get things done. … He wants products. He wants results.” Some 122 people applied for a slot on the DAC, showing the “enormous” interest in disability issues, she said. “This is not just for show.”
The FCC received a record number of applications from people who wanted to be on the new committee, said Kris Monteith, acting chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. “It's really unprecedented,” she said. “You represent the brightest minds on issues concerning communications access by people with disabilities and collectively, you have hundreds of years of experience.”
DAC is divided into four subcommittees: Communications, Emergency Communications, Relay/Equipment Distribution and Video Programming. The subcommittees met in closed meetings after the introductory morning session.
Topics the subcommittees are expected to take on include the reliability of off-the-shelf equipment used by those with disabilities and the overall availability of equipment, according to reports from the subcommittees at the end of the meeting. Another topic is getting a better sense of how many people are legally blind, how many experience vision loss and what that means. An additional likely topic is closed captioning and finding a more-permanent home for the delivery of video description in the broadcast and cable industries. DAC will also examine gaps in emergency communications for people with disabilities, members of the group said.
Matthew Gerst, who represents CTIA on DAC, said it’s important the committee doesn’t focus on issues that already have been addressed. Based on discussions in the two subcommittees on which he sits, some of the issues raised so far are ones the commission already has addressed, Gerst said. “It would help to give everybody sort of a baseline understanding of what the FCC has done, which has been a lot.” The full DAC will meet again June 23, officials said.
The DAC is on some levels the successor group to the Emergency Access Advisory Committee, which had a sometimes troubled history. EAAC released a report in late 2011 on the future of emergency communications for people with disabilities, only to have industry representatives on that committee file an addendum questioning many of the findings (see 1202130083).