Emergency Captioning Information From the FCC

Last year, about one-third of the inquiries and complaints handled by the Disabilities Rights Office involved access to television by people with disabilities. This includes concerns about:

* closed captioning,
* access to emergency information, and
* video description for people who are blind.

About 25% of all inquiries and complaints involving access to television involved access to emergency information. This included consumer and industry inquiries for information about our rules: what the rules say, what they mean and who must comply.

About a third, however, rose to the level of an informal complaint that we may serve on the television provider. Typically such complaints are about weather emergencies --warnings about tornadoes, hurricanes, and severe flooding. But unfortunately, since September 11, we have received complaints from consumers about access to emergency information involving terrorism and more recently about the anthrax mailings.

The most likely failing we see when we analyze these consumer complaints is either:

* No access to the emergency information at all has been provided; that is, emergency information was announced but it was not provided visually, so deaf and hard of hearing people were left guessing what was going on; and

* The critical details about the emergency that tell a person what to do were missing. For instance, "Take alternate Route 50," or "Leave the area by 6 p.m."

Now let me describe our informal consumer complaint process. A consumer who thinks that a broadcaster is not complying with the rule may complain to the FCC. The viewer may contact the broadcaster first, but is not required to do so under the rule.

An informal complaint filed with the FCC should include several pieces of information:

* the name of the local broadcast station;
* the date and time that emergency information was not displayed; and
* the type of emergency.

Complaints about non-broadcast stations should include the name of the programmer as well as the name of the distributor.

We accept complaints that are filed in a variety of forms: letter, fax, telephone -- including voice, TRS and TTY -- and e-mail, for example. If the person filing the complaint has a disability, the complaint may be made in whatever form best accommodates his or her disability.

Once a complaint is filed, the Commission notifies the broadcaster of the complaint, and the broadcaster has 30 days to respond to the complaint. Based on the information in the complaint and the response, and any other information the FCC may request from either party, the FCC will make its decision and take appropriate action.

Our goal in enforcing the emergency access rule is not to be punitive. Instead, we seek to ensure that people who are deaf or hard of hearing receive accurate, timely and critical information in the event of an emergency -- to the same extent that people with hearing do.

In fact, there is a business case to be made for complying with the emergency access rule. Today there are 53 million Americans with all types of disabilities. Loss of hearing affects an estimated 28 million people, including children, working age adults and more and more seniors. And this number will grow as our population ages. Certainly, when deaf or hearing-disabled people know they can rely on a given broadcaster to provide critical, accessible information in the event of an emergency, they will turn to that broadcaster again and again. Complying with the emergency access rule is not only the law; it makes good business sense as well.

The issue of homeland security has taken on central importance since September 11. As a nation, we've seen the creation of the Homeland Security Office within the White House and, at the FCC, Chairman Powell has identified homeland security as one of the agency's five priority policy areas. We look forward to working with our colleagues -- like the Minnesota Department of Public Safety -- at the state and local levels to undertake coordinated homeland security efforts.

The term "homeland security" encompasses a number of activities, including emergency preparedness and the ability to communicate important information to all citizens in the event of a crisis. As fate would have it, last August 13th -- almost a month to the day before the terror attacks -- the FCC issued a public notice reminding broadcasters of their obligation to provide emergency information in accessible formats. We are hopeful that that reminder helped to increase broadcasters' use of captioning and other visual displays of emergency information in the wake of the terror attacks.

We learned from September 11 the importance of the emergency access rule. We heard from a number of hearing-impaired people that having access to emergency information made them feel like they "belonged" for the first time and that they were not being left out. They felt like a part of our larger society. And so I hope that broadcasters here today hear that by providing accessible emergency information, they help to bring an isolated community into the mainstream.