American Association of People with Disabilities

Comments of Claude Stout, Executive Director, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc., (TDI).

Remarks made at a workshop to address issues related to ensuring that consumers with disabilities are prepared for the digital television transition. The program was held by the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau (CGB) at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Washington, D.C., February 28, 2008. Other panelists included Eric Bridges of the American Council of the Blind, and Larry Goldberg of the National Center for Accessible Media. Their remarks can be seen in the open-captioned webcast of the event, found on the FCC website archives.

(Note: Mr. Stout’s remarks here are derived from the speaker’s notes and are not a transcript of the event. The websites for documents referred to by Mr. Stout are also provided below).

CLAUDE STOUT:
“We commend the FCC for its current work on DTV transition. We take note of their recent special efforts as follows:

• An American Sign Language video, which is a work in progress, that will provide some digital television transition details. Specifically, we commend the FCC’s CGB for involving us in the script development for taping this.
• Additionally, the creation of several Fact Sheets or Consumer Advisories, such as “Buying the Right TV: What Every Consumer Should Know,” and “DTV Is Coming (And Sooner Than You Think!)”, and on “Closed Captioning and Converter Boxes”
• We also like the new FCC online form [Form 2000C] for complaints about digital television captioning.

Top Issues for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Americans

I will speak now of the most important issues facing deaf & hard of hearing Americans in regard specifically to the digital television transition:

1. Like everyone else, we need to know about the February 17, 2009 deadline.

2. But we have additional challenges. It is not as simple to get captions on TV programs like everyone else has with turning on the audio.

3. The FCC should conduct some enforcement activities to ensure the TV industry is in compliance with its current captioning regulations. While following up on complaints from consumers is good, however, we believe that issuing Public Notices, and business Advisories will help press the issue further.

   These Public Notices should regularly remind video programming distributors that they must do their part to make sure both analog (608) and digital (708) captions are passed-through and decoded on our digital televisions.

   We would also like to see the FCC make an immediate decision on whether networks that claim to be new are not exempt from captioning for their digital programming. Also, has the FCC communicated with the TV stations to ensure that they are broadcasting both digital and analog captions on their broadcasts?

4. We would like the FCC to work with its sister agency, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to ensure that sufficient captioning and video description access is provided in the over 40 coupon-eligible converter boxes that will be made available to the public who retains analog TV sets and who will have the digital signal converted back to analog. Coupon program is available.

5. We believe also that NTIA must provide additional guidance on the mandatory and voluntary features of the various digital-to-analog converter boxes:

   1. About the closed captioning button on remote controls.
   2. About decoding CEA-708 captions as well as the pass-thru CEA-608 caption data.
   3. Supporting the Secondary Audio Programming (SAP) channel and video description. For instance, does SAP button have tactile marker?
   4. User interfaces must be accessible to a viewer who is blind or has low vision.

Steps the FCC Can Take to Expand Knowledge about the DTV Transition

I say the following in regard to our disability constituency and how the FCC can best ensure increasing the level of knowledge about the digital television transition.

The current estimate is around 79 percent of the American population is aware of the DTV transition. I cannot say this percentage is true for the deaf and hard of hearing population. My gut estimate would be that it is less, around 25 to 50 percent of us.

For the FCC to spread the good word about DTV transition, they should:

1. Post information always in text on websites.
2. Share information on Vlogs (video blogs) as many persons who are sign language users like to watch video blogs to receive information.
3. We publish pertinent information in our groups’ publications so provide us items to use.
4. We give workshops to small audiences at the local level, as well as in national conventions/conferences (for instance, the Hearing Loss Association of America’s chapter meeting in Baltimore, MD.).
5. We encourage the FCC to work with NAB, NTIA, CEA, etc. to ensure captions are provided on videos that are broadcasted on any promos or public service announcements related to DTV transition.
6. We urge the FCC to work with cable and satellite providers to sponsor local DTV workshops.
7. We urge more work with consumer electronic retailers to host local live events to introduce and answer questions on converter boxes, as well as digital television sets.

Other Consumer Campaigns That Offer Lessons

In our community, the campaigns involving Y2K, the Deaf Census, joint consumer-responder emergency training, legislative action alerts, and voter registration have been the campaigns we have experienced that involve conducting a massive publicity/data collection effort.

Additionally, Expos are great to disseminate the word and information, either from passing material at an exhibit or to give short product/service demonstration to an assembly near the exhibits.

Furthermore, there are Internet listservs that address the DTV transition. In our deaf and hard of hearing community, for instance, we have captioning and telecommunications listservs, and they cover one or two aspects of DTV transition.

Ways the FCC Can Better Partner and other Successful Methods To Reach the Grass Roots

1. It’s important to remember there are people with disabilities throughout other minority groups such as Hispanics and Native Americans – we can and must reach them within these groups.
2. Senior citizens need to be aware of captioning and video description accommodations for their TV viewing needs. Other outreach can be done in educational programs and community events – not only in colleges/universities such as in sign language classes or in independent living centers for people with disabilities. The Northern Virginia Resource Center (NVRC) for people who are deaf and hard of hearing is a role model community service center in Fairfax, VA. They run daily digest releases on DTV transition issues.
3. Public school systems and special day programs can help address this topic.

Also, we are an affiliate member of the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT), a nationwide coalition of disability groups, numbering over 177 organizations, and this group has a special Yahoo listserve that addresses this topic. We encourage people to sign up on the COAT website and join the DTV Yahoo discussion group.