Thursday, October 27, 2011

Your Captioning Comments

You've got a few more days to make a comment about the FCC's plan to change the technical rules on closed captioning. The deadline was Oct 28, but the National Association of Broadcasters asked for more time. In response, the FCC changed the comment deadline to Nov 1. The Commission plans to extend its closed-captioning rules for TV to apply to PCs, tablets, smartphones, game consoles and set-tops as part of its effort to fulfill a requirement in the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010. The commission has until January 12 of next year to change its closed captioning regulations related to IP. The proposal would not only obligate the owners of video programming to caption, it would require the program distributors to allow those captions - which must at least have the same quality as captions provided for television. The commission is also considering allowing a variety of delivery options rather than mandating a single standard, in hopes of promoting "technological innovation." If you want to make a comment, click here.