CVAA Agenda Item Compromises on Voice and Gesture Commands
A draft item on accessibility for user interfaces on the agenda for the FCC's Thursday meeting contains a compromise on using voice or gesture commands to activate captions that is expected to satisfy both consumer groups and pay-TV carriers, said industry officials and pay-TV attorneys in recent interviews. Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the National Association of the Deaf and other groups filed a petition for reconsideration (see 1401240080) of the FCC's first user interfaces order, approved in 2013 as part of efforts to comply with the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). Along with a recon order containing a captions compromise, the draft item includes an order on training and notification requirements for pay-TV carriers informing their customers about accessibility.
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The item also includes a Further NPRM seeking comment on rules that would allow consumers to control the placement and other aspects of closed captions, and require user guides to include captioning information on public, educational and government (PEG) channels in user guides, public interest and industry officials told us. There's concern in the multichannel video programming distributor industry that the proposals in the Further NPRM are outside the FCC jurisdiction, said a communications attorney. Though the item seeks only comment on the proposals, issuing an Further NPRM on them is seen as an indication there's support for turning them into rules within the commission.
The CVAA doesn't give the agency the authority to require cable operators to include specific content in program guides, NCTA said in a meeting between NCTA Deputy General Counsel Diane Burstein and front-line staff of Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, according to a filing posted Friday in docket 12-108 "Such a requirement with respect to programming on public, educational and governmental channels would cause significant operational and technical challenges for cable operators," NCTA said.
The Georgetown Law Institute of Public Representation, Hearing Loss Association of America, NAD and TDI also visited with commission staff last week to talk about possible accessibility features. The groups urged the FCC to consider such options as closed captioning display settings that allow adjusting the caption's size or color as a type of accessibility feature, and that user access to such display settings should be on the first level of a menu.
The petition for recon by the disabilities groups was concerned whether a gesture or voice control could be used as the sole means of activating closed captioning on a device. The groups said they were concerned that under 2013 rules, voice or gesture controls could be considered comparable to a “button, key or icon” and thus satisfy the FCC's requirements. Such controls would be hard for the blind or hearing impaired to use, the groups said. Under the compromise in the draft recon order, voice or gesture controls could be used to access captions but won't be the sole means, said public interest and industry officials.
TDI's understanding is that "the item addresses our concerns about allowing voice controls as the sole mechanism for enabling or disabling captions, and we are pleased that the Commission is taking steps to address that shortcoming of the previous order,” emailed a spokesman. “It is not yet clear the extent to which the item will bar or discourage the use of gesture controls as a sole mechanism, and we hope that the final item will be unequivocal on that point and make clear to manufacturers that designing new products that are inaccessible to people with mobility disabilities is not acceptable.”