Industry, Consumer Groups Clash on Accessibility Rules for UIs, Programming Guides

The FCC shouldn’t impose additional requirements for making user interfaces (UIs) and programming guides accessible, said CEA, NCTA, the Telecommunications Industry Association, Verizon and others, in responses to an FCC further NPRM and in oppositions to a petition for reconsideration filed by consumer groups. “Unnecessary and overly prescriptive regulations will stifle innovation and limit manufacturers’ flexibility in bringing cost-effective consumer devices” to consumers, said CEA. The commission’s UI and programming guide rules should be written “to help ensure that individuals with disabilities are able to fully utilize communication services and better access video programming,” said the National Association of the Deaf and other groups representing the hearing impaired.

After issuing accessibility rules for UIs, the FCC asked for comments on proposed rules defining how much notice of accessibility options companies are required to provide consumers, what information should be included in programming guides and whether to more rigidly define how accessibility features can be accessed. Also in the wake of the rulemaking, consumer groups filed a petition asking the FCC to reconsider allowing closed captioning and other accessibility features to be activated with voice commands or gestures. Comments on both proceedings were due Tuesday.

The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) requires the commission to allow entities “maximum flexibility” in fulfilling accessibility rules, said TIA in an opposition to the consumer groups’ petition for recon. Allowing voice or gesture controls along with buttons will keep manufacturers from being “impeded from developing new and innovative accessibility solutions for their products,” TIA said. NCTA challenged the consumer groups’ assertion that the commission had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not providing proper notice of the possibility that voice or gesture commands would be allowed for accessing features like closed captioning. “At least four commenters, including CEA, DirecTV, ITIC, and NCTA, proposed voice and gesture controls as a means of activating closed captioning,” NCTA said. The Entertainment Software Association and CEA also opposed the consumer groups’ petition. The FCC is “fully justified in holding that voice and gesture commands are two examples of compliant mechanisms that covered entities may choose,” CEA said.

"Access is not possible if those who need the access are not aware of its availability,” said consumer groups. To give consumers notice of accessibility features, manufacturers and multichannel video programming distributors should be required to include information about accessibility on product packaging and company websites, and customer service representatives should be trained to answer questions about accessibility features, said the groups. Specific rules on notifying customers will limit MVPD flexibility and add expense to products, said Verizon and NCTA. “By selecting some arbitrary context for notices, the Commission may simply add expense to an MVPD’s advertising or billing budget without any evidence to suggest such contexts would be usefully accessed,” said Verizon. Such rules would “exceed the commission’s mandate under the CVAA,” NCTA said.

The FCC has authority to require MVPDs to provide “program-specific information” for public, educational and government (PEG) channels in programming guides, said the Alliance for Communications Democracy. The commission should require PEG information to be included in guides because such programming often contains information for the disabled, and it’s more difficult for disabled users to get that information by other means, ACD said. Since some cable operators include PEG information, MVPD claims that including PEG information in a channel guide would be burdensome are false, ACD said. The exclusion of PEG guide information is “the result of cable operator whim, perhaps a cable operator’s visceral dislike of PEG channel obligations, or some operators’ indifference as to whether PEG channels are as easily accessible to subscribers as other channels on their systems,” said ACD. “Mandating the inclusion” of PEG information in guides “has no basis in the CVAA or elsewhere and would impose significant and unnecessary burdens on the industry,” said NCTA. “Dictating the contents of video programming guides and menus” would “contravene” CVAA rules about flexibility, said Dish Network and EchoStar jointly.

Consumer groups and industry commenters also came into conflict on the question of how accessibility features beyond closed captioning should be accessed. Closed captions are already required to be accessed through a button, key or icon, but requirements for secondary features, like the ability to alter the size, font and colors of closed captioning were left as a question in the FNPRM. Those features should be able to be accessed with comparable ease to a volume control, the consumer groups said. That kind of requirement would “unduly restrict compliance efforts,” said NCTA. “A subscriber that utilizes closed captioning may opt to change user settings only infrequently, so requiring a mechanism for the selection of additional menu features that are not commonly used risks making the activation process more complicated, not less.”

Limiting a setting with multiple options to a simple button or icon isn’t appropriate for a feature with multiple options like closed caption settings, said TIA. Don’t apply any rules governing such settings to IP closed captions, said the association. “The Commission should not base its decisions in an IP world on the experiences of legacy devices and services.”