Captioning Deadline Looms

The first deadline for FCC mandated closed captioning for Internet video is growing close. The end of September marks the first phase of implementation. After that deadline, the list of types of videos that must be captioned will grow. The rules do not cover YouTube clips and other amateur videos, but professionally produced videos, particularly those already made available through broadcast, cable or satellite services. The September 30th deadline concerns full-length video published or shown on TV in the U.S. that has not been especially edited for the Internet (in other words, video that includes deleted scenes and altered TV scores would not come under this deadline, but video with a different number of commercials would still have to be captioned by the deadline). The next deadline after September is March 30, 2013. That's when all live and near-live programming must be closed captioned. Broadcasters will have 45 days after the original date of broadcast on TV to provide captions for materials produced between March 30, 2014 and March 30, 2015.