Emergency Communications

November 2013 — A recent ruling by the United States District Court found that New York City failed to accommodate the needs of people with disabilities when planning for and responding to disasters in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) can be received on cell phones across the country. These alerts are automatic, provide AMBER alerts, and weather emergency notifications. Unlike text alerts you may receive from your city, county, or institution, you do not have to sign-up to receive WEA messages.

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Technologies (Wireless RERC) is interested in your level of awareness of WEA messages. This survey will also help us understand how accessible and useful you think they are.

October 2013 — The Wireless RERC filed comments in response to a Public Notice [EB Docket No. 04-296] issued by The Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (the Bureau) of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding issues identified during the first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) on November 9, 2011. The comments filed by the Wireless RERC specifically responded to the Bureau’s request for comment on how the FCC can address the accessibility of visual text crawls accompanying EAS alerts.

October 2013 — The Wireless RERC released a Research Brief entitled, “FM Radio and RBDS-Based Emergency Alerting: Possibilities and Potholes.”  The brief discusses the limitations of current mobile emergency alerts, noting the expense and unreliability of Short Message Service (SMS) text messages and the limited text allowed for Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA).

September 2013 – The Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (the Bureau) of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Public Notice [EB Docket No.