Simington Warns FCC May Have Smaller Role Overseeing Issues Important to Disabled
The FCC’s reconstituted Disability Advisory Committee held its initial meeting Wednesday, receiving updates from agency staffers on recent developments at the commission. DAC took no actions at what was a virtual introductory meeting. Commissioner Nathan Simington said the start of the new DAC raises questions about the role the FCC will play in the future as more services are no longer clearly regulated by the agency.
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Simington said he's interested in DAC’s pending work on audio-description file transmission to IP-based video services and direct-video calling. Both mean “accommodating functional equivalence, or functional-equivalence-like accommodations, in the digital age,” he said. “From the sometimes multiple numbers required for [telecom relay services] users to operate TRS services to incomplete TRS service integration to the diminished oversight over the growing over-the-top media marketplace, there is a lot of work to do.”
“What happens to the public interest and media diversity when most or all media services are delivered over the top by a few national providers?” Simington asked: “What happens in 10 or 20 years to functional equivalence when AI-powered commercial services are strictly preferred by the deaf and hard of hearing communities over services that the commission actually regulates?”
Simington said there are many questions about the future of the FCC and the role it will play when most services are unregulated and “delivered over the top.” Maybe the FCC “just sort of gracefully diminishes into a physical transmission regulator in the future, overseeing matters of spectrum, cabling, transmission and reception,” he said. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, “and there may even be some reason to prefer it in some cases, but I don’t think that sounds like a satisfactory answer to those of you who do the essential work of achieving functional equivalence and overseeing vital services for the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities,” he said.
The FCC and DAC have “an institutional competence … developed over decades” that’s “unlikely to be replicated by the mere operation of the marketplace,” Simington said.
The FCC first chartered DAC in 2014 and “there is no doubt the state of technology and telecommunications has grown leaps and bounds since that time,” said Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. “There can be no doubt that you all have played an important role in making sure that as technology develops it does so in a manner that is accessible to all,” he said: “Ensuring that all Americans have access to communications technology is at the core of what we do at the FCC” and “accessibility is woven into much of the work we do.”
Starks noted the FCC adopted a Further NPRM last week on more requirements for wireless emergency alerts (see 2304200040). The FNPRM cites 2016 comments from DAC on the importance of multilingual alerting, he said. “In addition to proposing that alerts be translated into the default language selected on a user’s mobile device, we also seek comment on how to leverage text to speech functionality on mobile devices to ensure that alerts can be understood by blind and low-vision users and whether and how WEA might be improved to provide support for American sign language,” he said.