TV Captioning Issues - Part 3

By Lise Hamlin

Editor: Here's Lise Hamlin's writeup of Cheryl Heppner's workshop on TV Captioning Issues. This workshop included a bunch of captioning pros, including:
Moderator: Cheryl Heppner, Executive Director, NVRC
- Rosaline Crawford, Director, Law & Advocacy Center, National Association of the Deaf
- Greg Hlibok, Senior Attorney, Disability Rights Office, Federal Communications Commission
- Michael Schooler, Deputy General Counsel, National Cable & Telecommunications Association
- Heather York, Account Executive/Marketing Manager, VITAC
- Marsha McBride, Executive Vice President, Legal & Regulatory Affairs, National Association of Broadcasters

This is part three of three parts.

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Here's Part One

Here's Part Two

Here's Part Three

National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA)

Michael Schooler, vice president and deputy general counsel of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) spoke next about cable and satellite issues with closed captioning and how they're being resolved.

Michael reported he'd been with the cable industry for 25 years. He noted that throughout those 25 years they have been prodded by consumer organizations to do better in adapting technological developments to meet the needs of the community. From his perspective, there has been enormous progress during the last quarter century so that now, as required by the FCC's rule, virtually all cable networks are captioned.

According to Michael, the problems are no longer that networks aren't captioned, rather that:
1) the quality of the captioning may not be perfect;
2) certain types of live and emergency programming can't always be captioned in the optimal and most useful way;
3) the equipment used to watch captioned programs on cable systems, especially with digital boxes that are now being deployed, sometimes makes it difficult to navigate to the captioning.

1) Quality in captioning. According to Michael, the quality issue is largely an issue of accuracy, but includes issues of format, misspelling, type fonts and the like. He indicated that cable operator members of NCTA can't do much about that because they generally pass through whatever captioning is provided by the program networks. However, program network members of NCTA do enter into contracts that include quality and accuracy provisions, and do monitor and review the performance of the captioning services that they use. In addition, captioners compete with each other to perform accurately and keep their clients. It was Michael's contention, and he asked to be corrected if he was wrong, that the accuracy problem mostly occurs with live programming.

2) Emergency captioning. With respect to live news and emergency programming, Michael said he understood that information conveyed via captioning does not always match what is being provided in the audio content of the programming. He indicated that the provision of live unscripted programming has often been most difficult and expensive to ensure. For many systems, the costs of retaining a live captioner 24 hours a day to provide for the eventuality of remote or on the spot news could be cost prohibitive and would make it impossible to have such channels this some of the smaller systems around the country.

For now, for these purposes, cable systems will rely on the emergency alert system for emergencies for those services. But, he said, his organization understands the frustration of that and hopes that that is a problem they can begin to solve at some point.

3) Equipment. NCTA is aware and sympathetic to the difficulties of how to access closed captioning on our digital set top boxes. NCTA is trying to play an education role with their companies, helping them to train their customer service representatives and technicians to explain to customers how to use the equipment and prodding them to work with equipment suppliers to make their equipment easier to use for closed captioning.

Finally, Michael says that the NCTA realizes that even in cases where programming is captioned by the program network things can and do go wrong. Something may be wrong at the network, something may be wrong at the system, or something may be wrong in a particular customer's set top box or television equipment. In these cases, NCTA companies want to remedy problems and would like their customer service representatives to help find the source of the problem as quickly as possible.

Michael believes the best way to make that happen is to encourage viewers to let the cable system know about a problem as quickly as possible. If consumers find there is a problem that's not being seriously addressed and dealt with, let us know about it at NCTA. He concluded, "I want you to know that we as an industry do take these issues seriously and we want to continue making progress to ensure customer satisfaction for all of our customers."

Federal Communication Commission (FCC)

Greg Hlibok, an attorney advisor from the Disability Rights Office (DRO) of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), opened his comments by saying the FCC appreciated TDI's commitment and dedication to the cause of captioning. Greg said, "TDI, NAD, and other organizations keep the FCC is on their toes, making sure the FCC pays attention to this issue."

Digital TV
Greg focused first on the FCC's efforts regarding the transition to digital TV. Less than two years from now, by February 17th, 2009 there will be no transmission of analog signals to televisions in the U.S. Congress required the changeover to digital television to free up the airways for other purposes, primarily so that first responders will be able to be able to better use the airwaves to communicate during an emergency.

People who get their television signals using rabbit ears on top of their TV's or by antennas on top of their homes will go dark unless they have their own set top converter box. Roughly 23 million Americans still receive their TV signals through the air. The FCC has created educational materials to help people with the transition which Greg urged people to review. (http://www.dtv.gov/)

Caption Quality
Greg noted that all programs must be captioned with some exceptions. He reiterated that there was a petition filed by TDI and others asking the FCC to revisit the captioning rule, improving the monitoring, the enforcement of quality and standard. Currently, quality of captions is reported on annual basis, and he said more could be done to monitor standards. He indicated that baseline standards should be set, that whether penalties should be assessed for lack of captioning should be looked at and ENR captioning should be studied.

Captioning Undue Burden Exemptions
Greg noted that programmers have the option to choose from a list of exemptions that are self-imposed to see which ones apply. If the programmer believes the "undue burden" exemption applies, they must file with the FCC. Greg noted that the definition of "undue burden" is "difficulty to provide captioning." It could be either financial or lack of resources, but it is vague. Lawyers can't agree what it means.

Greg indicated that the FCC has 700 petitions that have been filed and that are pending. The FCC has not taken action on those, but will be taking action soon.

Complaint Process
The FCC formally receives many informal complaints about captioning as well as many other types of complaints other than captioning issues. The FCC is required to give a reply to complaints, and people who file complaints want a resolution. The FCC is changing its procedure so that every time they receive a complaint, and when the complaint is closed, the FCC will notify the person who made the complaint. That will be the procedure for the many, many, many thousands of complaints the FCC receives, not just captioning.

Also, they are aware that the complaint process is very complicated. Consumers must first contact the programmer. And the programmer is responsible to reply within 45 days. And if they don't get a response, the consumer should contact the FCC. The FCC is trying to streamline that process. They want to make the complaint process much easier and get the contact information available, so that people will be able to contact a broadcaster right away if the captions are missing. FCC recognizes this issue, and is working on the issue of getting contact information for the consumer and for broadcasters as well, so consumers can have a way to contact the right people. The FCC is encouraging a streamlined process for information and resolution of complaints.

Here's Part One

Here's Part Two

Here's Part Three