Technical Working Group on Captioning and Video Description

First Meeting of Technical Working Group on Captioning and Video Description

Part One

By Cheryl Heppner 5/19/09

Yesterday I attended the first meeting of the new Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) Technical Working Group which is to conduct an assessment
of closed captioning and video description technical issues associated with
the switch to digital television and recommend solutions to any technical
problems.

The Bottom Line

First the good news. The industry representatives were open, receptive and
often very engaged as we raised various captioning issues and concerns, and
the FCC staff was very helpful at moving things forward. As a result of
this meeting, the working group has set up four subcommittees to address
closed captioning areas:

1. Development of a form to diagnose captioning problems

2. Lessons learned from solving captioning problems and “unsolved
mysteries”

3. Consumer focus group (to look at information available and
improvements to make complex things simple)

4. The HD connection (HDMI, Blu-Ray, other consumer equipment) –
finding explanations for what is going on and coming back with potential
solutions

In addition, there seemed to be consensus by the industry reps that they
wanted a database or other mechanism to share information with each other to
more easily troubleshoot captioning problems.

Co-Chairs of the working group are Catherine Seidel, head of the Consumer
and Governmental Affairs Bureau and Julius Knapp, Chief of the Office of
Engineering and Technology. Several other FCC staff also attended to
observe. The turnout by members named by the FCC to participate in the
working group was high; in fact I don’t know any reps who did not
participate in person or by call-in. All three consumer representatives
were there – me representing NVRC , Karen Peltz Strauss for the FCC Consumer
Advisory Committee, and Eric Bridges for American Council for the Blind.
The industry representatives were a broad cross-section of those who have a
role in solving captioning and video description challenges — broadcast
networks, cable companies, trade organizations, captioning and video
description providers, television and consumer electronic equipment
manufacturers, and captioning equipment manufacturers.

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The Opening Act

Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps gave remarks at the opening of the working
group meeting. He called the establishment of the working group “a no
brainer” and traced its impetus to numerous requests by the FCC’s Consumer
Advisory Committee and consumer organizations. His presentation was
followed by words from Michael Jacobs of the Consumer and Governmental
Affairs Bureau, Cathy Seidel and Julius Knapp. They encouraged the
identification of issues and proposal of solutions, creation of a clearing
house for information, and an open process to diagnose problems.

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DTV Help Center Report

Chris Soukup of CSD reported on the activities of the Digital TV Help Center
launched in February 2009 under a contract with the FCC to assist deaf, hard
of hearing, deaf-blind and speech-disabled consumers as well as hearing
relatives and friends of these consumers. The DTV Help Center offers many
ways to get help. Since opening, it has amassed these statistics:

– Unique web visitors: 130,000

– On-the-ground outreach: 22,720

– CSD Electronic eNews: 12,592

– Outreach calls: 10,880

– Remote installations (English): 851

– Remote installations (Spanish): 74

– FaceBook Fans: 1,177

– MySpace Friends: 434

– Social Networks: 547

CSD’s DTV Help Center has been documenting captioning issues and capturing
information such as whether those with problems use cable, satellite or
over-the-air broadcasts and what type of television is used. The top
complaints identified are:

1. Captions out of sync with the audio – 65%

2. Captioned text is garbled – 64%

3. Captions in the wrong place, mid-screen or cut off on sides – 46%

4. Captions overlapping or overwriting on each other – 40%

5. Captions jumping around screen or flashing on and off – 33%

6. Captions filling up the screen, not just 1-3 rows – 31%

In addition, 40% of consumers report that problems happen on individual or
occasional programs and 37% report problems happen on certain channels.

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Consumer Perspectives

Dana Mulvany, a long-time consumer advocate on captioning issues, gave a
presentation that touched on numerous issues such as the standard for
transmission of closed captioning data and how different stations handle
closed captioning problems. She spoke from personal experience about the
difficulty in identifying the source of a captioning problem. Some issues
she’s brought to the attention of broadcasters have been fixed but others
have never been resolved, nor have some networks responded to her attempts
to correct the problems. Dana also talked about the problems she
encountered with a digital TV converter box which could convert captions
from some stations but not others. As an example, the captions from the
Baltimore affiliate for ABC were fine, but captions from the Washington, DC
affiliate were sent in a way that was not obtainable until two weeks ago.
She also talked about how new problems arise; after leaving Maryland she
returned months later to discover there were new captioning problems.

Following Dana’s presentation, I talked about the problems consumers have
had with High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) cable that has become
the choice for digital televisions and other equipment such as set-top boxes
and Blu-Ray players. Karen Peltz Strauss followed with her personal
experience to illustrate how difficult it can be for a consumer to find the
captioning controls and set them up for use with digital television.

Larry Goldberg of the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) noted that
there is no point-to-point contact for tracking down captioning problems.
NCAM’s attempts to help consumers have found that sometimes “user error” is
responsible, but finding the root of a problem can be exhausting with the
many kinds of equipment, cables, and other variables.

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Standards for Captioning

Graham Jones, representing the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB),
believes that the standards for captioning and carrying captions are sound
and that revisions have made necessary corrections. Revised engineering
guidelines for implementation of closed captioning are now going through the
ballot process. His view is that implementation is the key.

Andy Setos, representing FOX, said that the digital switch has been
challenging. There were tremendous problems with “late captioning.” It was
discovered that technicians were monitoring the captioning streams but not
how they synchronized with the sound. Live captioning done by contractors
were better synchronized. FOX has stepped up its diligence on quality.
The “shadow transition” has caused upheavals in reliability of captioning,
but things are getting to a point where digital captions can be as reliable
as analog ones.

Larry Goldberg noted that both 608 (analog) and 708 (digital) captions have
to be in a signal now, and have been for a long time; 708 captions are
derived from 608 captions.

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Moving Toward Solutions

At this point Co-Chair Julius Knapp noted that the discussion had identified
that there are problems with how captions are generated, transmitted and
received. He asked about working on development of a database for the
industry.

I talked about how consumers wanted action to be taken now to resolve the
problems. Graham Jones spoke in favor of a “cue set” to help consumers
troubleshoot and resolve their problems as an outcome from the working
group.

Brian Markwater of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) noted that it
is sometimes hard to get the level of detail to troubleshoot. Graham Jones
talked about the closed captioning summit pulled together by Larry Goldberg
18 months ago to try to get action on closed captioning issues; due to lack
of funding NCAM was unable to follow up. Work has been done by VITAC’s
CaptionsOn project and by CSD’s survey, but Karen Strauss noted that the
surveys need to be much more extensive.

Co-Chair Cathy Seidel asked what other data is being collected by the
industry. Gerald Freda reported that CaptionMax does some follow up on
consumer complaints for programs it has captioned. John Card of Echostar
said that DISH customers have reported problems and that followup can be
complicated because the customers may not be watching live programming.
Also consumers don’t always know what box they have. Bob Gabrielli of
DirecTV reported that they also find it a challenge that many complaints
arrive days or weeks after a problem occurred.

Karen Strauss touched on new rules for the complaint process that will make
complaint reporting more effective. Under the 1998 rules still in effect,
she noted, someone is supposed to be monitoring captioning for any problems,
and that is not meant to be what goes out but what comes into consumer
homes.

Greg DePriest (NBC) said the network has put a lot of energy into sending
the captions right and asked if there was a set of best practices that could
be used. Brian Markwater found the key is in execution. Cathy Seidel said
the working group is open to development of best practices.

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Additional Issues — Interoperability

A whole variety of other problems with design will need to be dealt with,
Graham Jones (NAB) reminded the group. The need for a closed captioning
button without layers of complicated menus is going to have to be resolved
by the manufacturers.

Andy Setos said that it is impossible for FOX to monitor its programs
transmitted by all the cable and satellite companies. The ultimate answer
is to design equipment for interoperability. Right now the only solution to
problems is through remediation. He suggested a national database for
information sharing.

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