FCC Issues Fines for Failure to Make Emergency
Information Available to People with Hearing Loss
June 2005
Several months ago the FCC fined three San Diego television stations
for failure to provide critical emergency information to people with
hearing loss. Those were the first such fines, and we stated at the time
that we believed and hoped that the FCC would levy additional fines for
the ongoing failures of television stations to comply with their rules.
Last week we witnessed the second set of fines for this infraction.
These were against three Washington, D.C. area stations for failure to
provide appropriate emergency information regarding a
thunderstorm/tornado watch on May 25, 2004. The complaints that led to
the investigations and fines were filed by NVRC on behalf of people with
hearing loss in the Washington, D.C. area.
We provide two critical paragraphs from the rulings below. If you'd
like to read the rulings in their entirety, please point your browser
to:
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-1511A1.doc
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-1512A1.doc
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-1513A1.doc
This first paragraph discusses the growing population of Americans
with hearing loss and the increasing need to provide emergency
information visually.
"Approximately one in ten Americans - 28 million - has some
level of hearing loss; in the population of people over 65 years of age,
that number increases to one in three. As the median age of the
population continues to rise, the proportion of Americans with hearing
loss will likely increase. According to the American
Speech-Language-Hearing Association, '[t]he number of Americans with a
hearing loss has evidentially doubled during the past 30 years. Data
gleaned from Federal surveys illustrate the following trend of
prevalence [of hearing loss] for individuals aged three years or older:
13.2 million (1971), 14.2 million (1977), 20.3 million (1991), and 24.2
million (1993).' Access to television information in an emergency is
critical for all Americans, including this important and growing segment
of our population."
The next paragraph points out that the rules do NOT require closed
captioning, but allow for virtually any visual method that provides the
same information that is provided orally.
'The Commission's rules do not require closed captioning, but allow
for other methods of visual presentation, including, but not limited to,
open captioning, crawls, or scrolls. The Commission stated that it was
permitting these alternatives because it was concerned about the limited
'real-time' captioning resources available and their current costs. The
Commission made clear, however, that regardless of the method of visual
presentation used, video programming distributors must 'use [a] method
of visual presentation [that] ensure[s] the same accessibility [to
emergency information] for persons with hearing disabilities as for any
other viewer, as required by the rule.' This could include already
prepared signs or charts or handwritten information contained on a white
board. The Commission mandated equal accessibility because emergency
information is of 'equal or greater importance to persons with hearing
disabilities, and television plays a critical role in its
dissemination.' Further, it is clear from the Commission's definition of
emergency information, i.e., information about a "current"
emergency that provides critical details concerning 'how to respond to
the emergency,' that the Commission required video programming
distributors to display emergency information in a timely manner so that
viewers can respond to a current emergency before becoming endangered.
The Commission long ago recognized the importance of timeliness of
providing emergency information, noting that 'if visual notification is
delayed, it should not be unreasonably delayed so that a hearing
impaired person would not have time to take reasonable and constructive
precautions with regard to the emergency.' "
