Regulatory

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued final rules in accordance with Section 713 of the Communications Act to enhance the quality of closed captioning.  Despite previous rules, the FCC has continually received comments noting that captions are often found to be “inaccurate, garbled, incomplete, misspelled and/or misunderstood, incomprehensible, obscure the speaker, or significantly lag behind the spoken words they are intended to convey.”  The final rules require that captions are accurate and synchronous in portraying the spoken words and background noises, are present for

April 2014 — The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it has entered into a 10-year, statewide settlement agreement with the State of Rhode Island. The settlement follows an investigation of Rhode Island’s statewide day-activity service system for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

March 2014 — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched a new website this week highlighting best practices currently in place for implementation of text-to-911.  The website is designed to provide resources for text providers and public safety answering points (PSAPs), including lessons learned by the State of Vermont during their text-to-911 rollout and information on various technology solutions that can be used for text-to-911 implementations.  Currently the site provides sources from public safety organizations, such as the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and Ass

March 2014 — H&R Block has entered into a five-year consent decree with the Department of Justice (DOJ).  The decree follows complaints by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and two individual plaintiffs that H&R Block violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to ensure accessibility on their website and mobile applications.

March 2014 — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) in the Matter of Facilitating the Development of Text-to-911 and Other Next Generation 911 Applications and Framework for Next Generation 911 Deployment [PS Docket No. 10-255 and PS Docket No. 11-153] regarding the implementation of text-to-911.