Emergency Access During DC Sniper Emergency
Remember the sniper situation in the Washington DC area
in 2002. It turns out that much of the coverage of those events were inaccessible
to people with hearing loss, because the emergency broadcasts were not
captioned or otherwise visually accessible. Here's a chronology of
efforts to get the FCC involved in correcting this travesty.
October
2002 - Much of the emergency information regarding
the Washington DC sniper is not captioned. Follow the developments
as NVRC organizes complaints against the local television stations.
January
2003 - Here's an update from Cheryl Heppner of NVRC
regarding the Washington DC area captioning complaints.
April
2003 - Want to hear the latest on the lack of emergency captioning
during the sniper shootings in the DC area. You're not going to believe
this! It seems that the FCC has ruled the sniper
shootings weren't actually an emergency. Really! I'm NOT
making this up!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
January 2003
Editor: During the sniper shootings last fall, the Northern Virginia
Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons (NVRC) took it upon
themselves to gather complaints about lack of emergency captioning
during this crisis and take steps to ensure that emergency captioning is
provided as appropriate in their area. Here's an update on that effort
from NVRC's Executive Director, Cheryl Heppner.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NVRC, with the help of many e-mail news readers, collected details
about lack of captioning of news broadcasts during the recent sniper
shootings. Official complaints were filed on October 18 with the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) against five local TV stations. The
complaints were filed on behalf of deaf and hard of hearing individuals
in the Washington, DC metro area. Copies of the FCC complaints were sent
to officials at each of the TV stations. NVRC is indebted to Sarah Geer
for her pro bono work in drafting the complaints.
On November 12, the FCC assigned file numbers to each of these
complaints and sent letters to the TV stations, giving them 30 days to
respond to the complaints and instructing them to satisfy or answer the
complaint "based on a thorough review of all relevant records and
other information." The stations were also directed to retain all
records which may be relevant to the complaint. The letters were signed
by Jack L. Forsythe, Chief of the FCC's Consumer Inquiries and
Complaints Division in the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau.
We'll keep you informed of the progress in resolving these
complaints. In the meantime, we are continuing to collect information
about instances where emergency captioning was not provided or other
captioning problems, to show that the sniper shootings were just one of
many times that captioning was a problem. Please let us know if you
experience captioning problems, but remember to be specific. List the
date, time, program you were watching, channel you were watching, and
what the problem was.
Delegate L. Karen Darner of Arlington, who represents Virginia's 49th
District in the General Assembly, learned of these problems with
captioning and contacted NVRC to ask how she could help. She has been in
touch with the General Assembly's Legislative Services to see what might
be done to address the problems. We thank her for her interest and
support.
-- Cheryl Heppner, Executive Director
