Advocates at FCC Forum Seek More Progress on Emergency Accessibility

Advocates for blind and hearing-impaired individuals praised progress on making emergency information accessible but want further improvements, speaking during the FCC’s virtual Video Programming Accessibility forum Thursday. Viewers with significant hearing loss spend their days relying on closed captioning, and thus have high expectations for captions on emergency information, said Lise Hamlin, Hearing Loss Association of America director-public policy. Hamlin and other panelists said the ability to move captions around on the screen to avoid obscuring other information would greatly aid accessibility in emergencies. The graphic displays of emergency information used by newsrooms often originate as data, so it should be possible to incorporate that data into additional audio streams, said Anil Lewis, National Federation of the Blind executive director-blindness initiatives. Broadcasters have to balance screen real estate with the need to display graphics in ways their audience can understand, said ABC-owned stations Vice President-Technology Pat Stahl. ATSC 3.0 should provide additional options for offering accessible emergency information, said NAB Vice President-Engineering and Technology Policy Kelly Williams and Televisa Univision Senior Vice President-Local Media Engineering Javier Garcia. The new standard allows a multitude of additional audio streams and could allow notifications to warn viewers when alternative aural information is available, said Williams. The difficulty of switching between a primary audio stream and a secondary one is a common complaint among the visually impaired, said Kim Charlson, executive director-Perkins School for the Blind library. For consumers, there shouldn’t be any distinction between online and over-the-air content for accessible emergency information, Charlson said. "The consumer should have the same expectation," she said.