Wednesday, August 22, 2012

NEW FCC Rules on Closed Captioning for Web TV Content

An article seen on gigaom.com advises us that "Web TV needs to have captions starting next month, FCC rules".  This was established with the "Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010" and reaffirmed by an FCC ruling just a few days ago.

Does this apply to you?  Are you legally required to CC all content you upload to your YouTube or Eduvision website?

First off, a caveat:  I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV.  For legal advice, always consult your attorney.  All right, moving on.  From my reading,  it appears that this applies to programming that has been shown on television and does not apply to "web-only" content.  If you are producing content in your home studio or school media center, this law does not legally require you to add Closed Captioned content to your video projects that you upload and show online.  That's my take on it, anyway.

  However, this does not answer if you should provide CC or subtitles on your video projects.  Does it serve your audience to have this content available to the hearing impaired?  Is it a good idea even if it's not legally required?  That is something you need to consider with your current and future video projects.