Digital Disability Access Bill Passes Senate

By John Eggerton
( Broadcasting & Cable )
published

The Senate Wednesday night passed S. 3828, the
Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, a bill that
updates disability access to communications services elements of the 1996 Telecommunications
Act.

The bill was passed with some "technical
corrections"--it was not clear at press time just what the impact of those
were--and now heads to the House.

The bill takes a number of steps to update the Telecommunications Act
disability access provisions to reflect the rise of broadband, including
reinstating the FCC's video description rules, which were tossed by a court in
1992, and applying closed captioning rules to online video as well as TV.

John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.