Advisory Committee Releases Report on Closed Captioning of Internet Video

  • The Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee (VPAAC) released its report to the FCC last week on the closed captioning of IP-video programming (a PDF of the report is available from the Broadcast Law Blog).
  • VPAAC (co-chaired by Vince Roberts, chairman of the board for ETC@USC) submitted the report as required by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act passed in October.
  • ETCentric member Brad Collar points out this will require closed captions be included in Internet distributed programming (the Accessibility Act requested rules requiring that once a program has aired on television with closed captions, any subsequent online distribution must also include closed captions).
  • The VPAAC report proposes a compliance schedule based on the date of the FCC’s revised rules: programming that has been prerecorded and unedited for Internet distribution (within six months), live and near-live programming (within 12 months), and programming that has been prerecorded and substantially edited for Internet distribution (within 18 months).
  • The report also includes recommendations for performance objectives, technical requirements and capabilities related to online closed captioning.

2 Comments

  1. interesting. I assume this is just for streamed video and will allow the viewer to turn off CC. I cant imagine this working for downloaded unles a service provide/content distributor offers 2 versions since the interactive ability to turn CC’s on and off in a file version doesn’t exist, correct?

  2. interesting. I assume this is just for streamed video and will allow the viewer to turn off CC. I cant imagine this working for downloaded unles a service provide/content distributor offers 2 versions since the interactive ability to turn CC’s on and off in a file version doesn’t exist, correct?

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