While people are increasingly watching TV on the internet, the provision of captioning on IP-TV has been very patchy. In Australia, prime time programs from ABC1 and ABC2 which can be watched on the ABC’s iView player are captioned, while about 15% of programs available for purchase from the Australian iTunes store have captions. The US legislation is the first to stipulate that programs must retain their captioning for viewing online.
The new Report and Order follows the signing into law of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Act of 2010. This requires owners of video programming to provide caption files when TV programs are made available for viewing on the internet, with the quality of the captions being at least as good as those which accompanied the TV broadcast.
The Report and Order also sets up rules governing consumer devices which receive IP-delivered video, as well as a timetable for the captioning of prerecorded, live and near-live programming.
FCC commissioner Robert McDowell released a statement with the Report and Order in which he concurred with it, but expressed concern with the timetable and expenses involved. McDowell also stated that, while the new rules were well intentioned, they could mean that some video content would be withheld from the internet.
Top of page