{"id":9867,"date":"2010-03-28T21:37:06","date_gmt":"2010-03-29T02:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/?p=9867"},"modified":"2010-03-29T03:03:49","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T08:03:49","slug":"working-with-the-fccs-consumer-advisory-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2010\/03\/28\/working-with-the-fccs-consumer-advisory-committee\/","title":{"rendered":"Working with the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Working with the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Cheryl Heppner<\/p>\n

Some of you may know that I was reappointed last year to serve
\nas a representative of NVRC on the Federal Communications
\nCommission (FCC) Consumer Advisory Committee. The FCC’s work is
\nvery important to NVRC in its quest for accessible
\ncommunication, whether by wired and wireless telephone with
\ntelecommunications relay services like IP relay, captioned
\ntelephone and VRS, television with captioning, or emergency
\n9-1-1 calls by voice, video or text, or many more technologies.<\/p>\n

During the last year there have been a lot of changes at the
\nFCC. There’s a new Chairman, Julius Genachowski. Two veteran
\nCommissioners, Michael Copps and Robert McDowell, have been
\njoined by new appointees Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Attwell
\nBaker. Other people in positions of great responsibility, such
\nas the chiefs of the bureaus, have also changed, and so have
\nmany of the staff. Thomas Chandler, who has been heading the
\nDisability Rights Office at the FCC, will soon return to the
\nU.S. Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

Disability Working Group<\/p>\n

The latest meetings of the Consumer Advisory Committee were held
\nlast Thursday and Friday. The committee’s Disability Working
\nGroup, which I co-chair with Eric Bridges of the American
\nCouncil for the Blind, met for almost two hours. Lise Hamlin of
\nHLAA, Claude Stout of TDI were there, and Karen Peltz Strauss,
\nsoon to become a Deputy Bureau Chief, was there to listen in.
\nOur discussion focused on what we believe should be the top
\npriorities for the FCC to address during the coming weeks and
\nmonths. We touched on a long list of topics such as setting
\nstandards for the quality of television captioning and video
\ndescription, the process of setting reimbursement rates for
\ntelecommunications relay services, ensuring access to televised
\nemergency information by those who are blind or visually
\nimpaired, and the need for the agency to update and implement
\nnew rules and regulations for today’s technology.<\/p>\n

It’s almost overwhelming to look at the backlog of things NVRC
\nhas worked on with the FCC that still haven’t been addressed.
\nDoes anybody remember how much time and energy we spent working
\nwith other organizations to submit what we called the “caption
\nquality petition” more than 5 years ago? Or our work to get the
\nword out about the FCC’s granting exemptions from captioning,
\nwhile working to get that decision reversed? No action has been
\ntaken to address the petition to improve caption quality, and
\nover 700 waivers are still in effect.<\/p>\n

Our working group also talked about the need to work more
\nclosely with the companies that make the equipment we use to
\nwatch television so we can be sure the new technologies are
\nstill accessible to us. The first 3-D televisions are rolling
\nonto shelves at stores like Best Buy, and we don’t yet know how
\nthey will work with captioning. One individual who has given
\npresentations on 3-D television issues calls 3-D TVs “the most
\ndangerous TV ever made,” and lest you think he was talking about
\nrogue captions, there are many other concerns. Some people get
\nqueasy watching movies in 3-D because our eyes and brains just
\naren’t wired for it.<\/p>\n

And hey, while we’re celebrating how more members of the
\nConsumer Electronics Association have listened to our plea for a
\ncaption button on each TV remote, it would be nice to cut down
\non hunting time by having the button’s location jump out right
\naway or be in the same general location on every remote. If you
\ntravel a lot, I’m sure you’d also love to be able to get your
\ncaptions without feeling like you’re in training to become an
\nelectronics engineer. It seems like every hotel television
\neither has a different menu to get the captions or you have to
\nget a tech person to come to your room with a master remote to
\nturn them on.<\/p>\n

Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau<\/p>\n

This was our first Consumer Advisory Committee meeting with the
\nnew Bureau Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs
\nBureau, Joel Gurin. How could I not like this guy? He and I come
\nfrom the same background, journalism and nonprofit management.
\nIn his case, the nonprofit was on a much greater scale; he
\nhelped revolutionize Consumer Reports to bring its power to the
\nWeb and many was involved in many other advances. At the FCC,
\none of the most recent innovations has been FCC Connect, which
\nis still being tested. Go to http:\/\/fcc.gov\/connect\/<\/a> and you’ll
\nfind 13 different ways you can keep in touch with the FCC’s
\nactions and provide input. Click on one of them,
\nOpenInternet.gov, to see blog discussions about the Open
\nInternet proceeding. Clearly the FCC is setting a new standard
\nfor transparency and consumer input.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gurin has a Consumer Task Force which consists of the chiefs
\nof all seven of the FCC’s bureaus. His goal is to make the FCC a
\nconsumer-responsive consumer protection agency. One of the
\nthings the FCC has done is to go through old video footage and
\nuse the video’s closed captions to translate the information to
\nother languages. Those complaints about the cost and time to put
\nin ramps for wheelchairs evaporated once the world began
\ndiscovering that they make life better for delivery people and
\nthose pushing baby strollers. Now there’s recognition of what
\nwe’ve said all along — our captions give a valuable tool for
\nmany, many people who aren’t deaf or hard of hearing.<\/p>\n

(c)2010 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard
\nof Hearing Persons (NVRC), 3951 Pender Drive, Suite 130,
\nFairfax, VA 22030; http:\/\/www.nvrc.org<\/a>; 703-352-9055 V, 703-352-9056
\nTTY, 703-352-9058 Fax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Working with the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee By Cheryl Heppner Some of you may know that I was reappointed last year to serve as a representative of NVRC on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Consumer Advisory Committee. The FCC’s work…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[3941,3942,65,2328,3946,3943,342,2019,278,3951,3949,1809,3948,2321,3950,468,3944,3947,3945,39,61],"class_list":["post-9867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deaf-news","tag-advisory-comittee","tag-captioned-telephone","tag-captioning","tag-cheryl-heppner","tag-consumer-advisory-committee","tag-emergency-9-1-1-calls-by-voice","tag-fcc","tag-federal-communications-commission","tag-ip-relay","tag-julius-genachowski","tag-meredith-attwell-baker","tag-michael-copps","tag-mignon-clyburn","tag-nvrc","tag-robert-mcdowell","tag-television","tag-text","tag-thomas-chandler","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-video","tag-vrs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p752R-2z9","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3922,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/08\/19\/new-ten-digit-numbering\/","url_meta":{"origin":9867,"position":0},"title":"New Ten-Digit Numbering and Emergency Call Handling Procedures for Internet-Based Telecommunications Relay Services","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"August 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"TDI-L eNotes - August 19, 2008 In this issue: New Ten-Digit Numbering and Emergency Call Handling Procedures for Internet-Based Telecommunications Relay Services Beginning on December 31, 2008, persons with hearing and speech disabilities using Video Relay Service (VRS) or Internet Protocol Relay (IP Relay) - two forms of Internet-based Telecommunications\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2700,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2007\/12\/30\/tdi-conference-tv-captioning-issues-part-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":9867,"position":1},"title":"TDI Conference: TV Captioning Issues – Part 3","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"December 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"TDI Conference: TV Captioning Issues - Part 3 By Lise Hamlin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editor: Here's Lise Hamlin's writeup of Cheryl Heppner's workshop on TV Captioning Issues. This workshop included a bunch of captioning pros, including: Moderator: Cheryl Heppner, Executive Director, NVRC - Rosaline Crawford, Director, Law & Advocacy Center, National Association\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":746,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2006\/11\/10\/more-ugly-news-on-captioning-exemptions\/","url_meta":{"origin":9867,"position":2},"title":"More Ugly News on Captioning Exemptions","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"November 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"More Ugly News on Captioning Exemptions By Cheryl Heppner Many of you have been following the recent saga of sudden mass exemptions granted for closed captioning of TV programs. The exemptions, over 270 of them, were given by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to mostly faith-based organizations. Few of these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6532,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2009\/05\/20\/technical-working-group-on-captioning-and-video-description\/","url_meta":{"origin":9867,"position":3},"title":"Technical Working Group on Captioning and Video Description","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"May 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":519,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2006\/10\/03\/selected-fcc-exemption-requests-faith-based-organizations\/","url_meta":{"origin":9867,"position":4},"title":"Selected FCC Exemption Requests – Faith-Based Organizations","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"October 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Selected FCC Exemption Requests (Compiled by Cheryl Heppner 10\/1\/06) Below are summaries of five requests by faith-based organizations who wanted their TV programs to be exempt from captioning. They give you an idea of what I found in the public files at the Federal Communications Commission. Keep in mind that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15181,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2011\/07\/26\/fcc-sets-six-month-deadline-for-internet-closed-captioning\/","url_meta":{"origin":9867,"position":5},"title":"FCC sets six-month deadline for Internet closed captioning","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"July 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"FCC sets six-month deadline for Internet closed captioning July 24, 2011 By Michael Grotticelli The FCC\u2019s Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee delivered its report on closed captioning last week, setting in motion a six-month time period for new rules requiring captions on the Internet. \u201cGiven the goal of providing closed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9867"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9883,"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9867\/revisions\/9883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}