US non-profit group sues CNN.com for uncaptioned online video

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Thursday, 16 June 2011 10:40am

A Berkeley-based non-profit group has filed a lawsuit against Time Warner for allegedly discriminating against the Deaf and hearing impaired by not providing captioned online videos on CNN.com.

CNN.com provides video-on-demand news content to millions of people via their website. The lack of captions means that those who are Deaf or hearing impaired are denied access to this service, instead being forced to wait for news to be aired via traditional television broadcast.

The Disability Rights Advocates who are representing the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness and three individual plaintiffs are calling the lawsuit the first of its kind.

Last year, a Canadian woman who is blind won a lawsuit against the Canadian Government after she could not apply for a federal job online or complete the 2006 census. The court found that government websites were not compliant with accessibility standards and constituted a breach of equality rights. It gave the government 15 months to make its websites compliant with the Canadian Charter of Rights, under supervision by the court. The Canadian Government is appealing the ruling.

For more information, see the Mercury News article.


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