Senators Advocate for Closed Captioning in Online Video Clips

December 2013 — In response to a decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reconsider the exemption of IP delivered video clips from captioning rules, Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass) wrote a letter to the FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to express their support in reconsideration of the matter. As authors of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA), the Senators expressed that their original intent in drafting the legislation was to ensure that all video clips, regardless of length, include captioning when delivered via IP.  In their letter, the Senators also highlight that the majority of current video clips do not include captions, “including 77% of news video clips.”  The letter concludes by urging the FCC to reconsider the captioning rules noting, “We hope that the FCC takes this opportunity to resolve this issue and ensure millions of people who are deaf and hard of hearing are not shut out from important online programming.”