CTA, NCTA, ACA Connects Spar With Consumer Groups on Caption Display Settings

The FCC doesn’t have the authority to require easy access to closed captioning display settings and doesn’t need to, said NCTA, ACA Connects and CTA in comments posted Friday in docket 12-108 in response to the Media Bureau’s call for a refreshed record (see 2201100052). A host of consumer groups disagreed, according to a joint filing from groups including Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the Helen Keller National Center, the National Association of the Deaf and the American Association of the DeafBlind. The problems highlighted in the FCC’s previous caption display settings round of comments have gotten worse, the groups said. “Apparatus and navigation devices still implement caption display settings through obscure, hard-to-find, hard-to-use, and inconsistent interfaces.” NCTA’s members already “have devoted significant resources to ensuring that the captioning features they provide are straightforward and simple to use,” NCTA said. The consumer tech industry “continues to innovate in user interface design” and “such advances demonstrate that the proposed mandate is unnecessary,” said CTA. The 1990 Television Decoder Circuitry Act “does not authorize the Commission to adopt rules regulating the provision of ‘ready access’ to closed captioning display settings by MVPDs,” said ACA Connects. Enabling viewers to easily access caption display settings is “required by the letter and spirit” of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act “as originally drafted” and consistent with other captioning rules, the consumer groups said. If the agency adopts a display setting requirement, it should include a “reasonable” compliance period and “narrowly tailored exemptions,” said CTA.