FCC Grants Year Extension Waiver for E-Readers to Include ACS Accessibility

The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau granted a one-year extension Wednesday of the FCC waiver for advanced communications services (ACS) accessibility rules to a basic class of e-readers, in an order in docket 10-213. E-reader makers had sought a waiver extension for an ongoing period of time, while groups representing the blind and vision impaired had opposed any extension of the initial one-year waiver (see 1411120048). The e-readers in the narrow class are primarily designed for reading text-based digital works, even though they're capable of accessing ACS, the bureau said. It won’t require e-reader manufacturers covered by the waiver to comply with section 14.20, 14.21 or 14.31 of the commission’s rules until Jan. 28, 2016. The bureau urged manufacturers to consider accessible design early on in development stages in future generations of e-readers "to provide ACS as one of their primary functions." "We're disappointed to hear that, but we're glad they haven't granted a permanent waiver," said a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind. "We don't feel that e-readers should be exempt at all [from ACS rules]. The content of e-readers is 1s and 0s, so it's not inherently visual and can be rendered as pure Braille or other formats." The federation will submit further comments to the FCC, he said. A lawyer for the Coalition of e-Reader Manufacturers that had sought the waiver extension for Amazon, Kobo and Sony declined to comment.