The Audio Description Project
An Initiative of the American Council of the Blind
Formerly AD International
FCC Votes to Reinstate Video Description
On August 25, 2011, the FCC was finally able to vote (unamimously) to reinstate video description, effective July 1, 2012. ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, USA, the Disney Channel, TNT, Nickelodeon, and TBS are each required to provide 50 hours of video-described prime time or children's programming per calendar quarter. Read Commissioner Clyburn's statement. Read the full FCC Report and Order.
NOTE: The FCC's order applies (at this time) to the Top 25 TV
Markets. View the
ranking of TV markets. The markets near the cutoff are:
St Louis (21), Portland OR (22), Charlotte (23), Pittsburgh (24), and
Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville (25). Just over the line are Baltimore
(26), Indianapolis (27, formerly 25), San Diego (28), and Nashville
(29). Indianapolis was the only area in the top 40 to move more than 1 position
in the last year. In six years, the top 60 markets must be
covered, adding 10 more markets per year after that.
FCC Adopts Two Key Provisions
In early March, 2011, the FCC adopted two key provisions of the newly enacted 21st Century Communications & Video Accessibility Act without the need for further public discussion:
Further details are available at COAT. At the same time, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps has praised CBS, FOX, PBS, TCM, and TNT for having voluntarily continued producing some shows with description even after the FCC's mandate was overturned in 2002.
Video Description Legislation Becomes Law
On
October 8, 2010, President Obama signed The 21st Century Communications
and Video Accessibility Act. Earlier, the House passed
HR 3101 (Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act
of 2009) and the Senate passed a modified S 3304 (Equal Access to 21st Century
Communications Act), which was closer to HR 3101 than their original version,
then voted on some technical amendments (S 3828). The House then voted
on the modified Senate bill on September 28, 2010,which was subsequently signed by President
Obama. Passage of those bills required a lot of lobbying by members
of COAT and others,
so congratulations to all who helped!
The new law assures restoration of the FCC's authority to mandate video description, at least for the largest networks in the largest population areas (although not for one year, October 2011). Now actually being able to receive description on your TV is a different story, but this is the start that we've been waiting EIGHT long years for!
• After 1 year, restores FCC rules
requiring 4 hours per week of video description on 9 television channels
(top 4 broadcast networks and top 5 cable channels) in the top 25 most populated
markets. [See UPDATE above]
• After 2 years, requires FCC to report to Congress on video description.
• After 4 years, permits the FCC to increase video description to 7 hours
per week on 9 television channels.
• After 6 years, requires the FCC to apply the video description requirements
to the top 60 most populated markets (not just the top 25 most populated
markets).
• After 9 years, requires the FCC to report to Congress on the need for
additional markets to carry video description.
• After 10 years, permits the FCC to expand video description to 10 new
markets annually to achieve 100 percent nationwide coverage.
• Requires cable/satellite set-top
box on-screen text menus and guides to be audibly accessible to individuals
who are blind or have low vision, if achievable.
• To provide access to built-in closed captioning and video description
features through a mechanism that is reasonably comparable to a button,
key, or icon designated for activating the closed captioning or accessibility
features.
• Requires devices designed to receive or play back video programming:
1. to make controls of built-in functions accessible to and usable by individuals
who are blind or have low vision, if achievable;
2. to make controls of built-in functions accessible to and usable by individuals
who are blind or have low vision through audio output;
3. to provide access to built-in closed captioning and video description
features through a mechanism that is reasonably comparable to a button,
key, or icon designated for activating the closed captioning or accessibility
features.
• Requires video programming owners, providers, and distributors to make emergency information accessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision.
For more information, see the section-by-section summary of what S. 3304 (as amended) will do for us at http://www.coataccess.org/node/9776.
Watch this website for updates, and you can learn more at the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT), the advocacy group that has made this possible. The ACB and its representative Eric Bridges have contributed valuable input on the content of these bills which finally made it to congressional votes.
There is a long history on the subject of audio description for television, which is typically called video description. The short version is that the FCC mandated it to start in April 2002, but their authority to do so was challenged successfully that same year, and for the next eight years measures got introduced in Congress to reinstate that authority, failing to get passed (probably because of tacked-on unrelated provisions) until the second half of 2010.
The only good news during those years was that some networks continued to produce audio description tracks for some of their shows (many shows for PBS, a few for CBS, for example). With the conversion to digital television, the problem of receiving the description increased immeasurably.
Originally description was offered by a feature of analog televisions called Second Audio Program, or SAP. By activating SAP via your remote, you could receive a secondary audio channel, replacing the primary one. The audio channel could be a Spanish language translation of the audio, or it could be a version of the primary audio that had been modified with description overlaid.
With the transition to digital TV in June of 2009, reception issues got significantly worse. While an audio channel was designated for audio description on digital TVs years ago, without the mandate for description the TV manufacturers did little or nothing to allow access to the channel, and very few TV networks have offered a digital audio description feed.
And then there is the question of the cable and satellite networks. They need to take a network feed and rebroadcast it, then make it available through their own set-top boxes. Historically this has required costly additional equipment, and implementation has been spotty.
So, to put it bluntly, we are in limbo regarding actually being able to receive description on TV! Congress has finally given the FCC the authority to mandate it from broadcasters and (we believe) will require manufacturers to make the description channel easy to access on all new TVs at some point in the future, but we're not there yet.
The key committee working on these problems is the FCC Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee, co-chaired by Larry Goldberg of WGBH Media Access, and a key workgroup is the Video Description Pass-Thru Workgroup, co-chaired by Brad Hodges of the AFB.
In the meantime, you can check some of the following topics for reference.
For audio described television outside the USA, see our International page.
