COAT recommendation: Reinstate the FCC’s modest regulations on video description and authorize the FCC to promulgate future rules to (a) further expand coverage of the video description rules, (b) require non-visual access to on-screen emergency warnings and similar televised information, and (c) ensure that the new DTV standard includes the capacity to deliver video description. Video description is the provision of verbal descriptions of on-screen visual elements that are provided during natural pauses in dialogue.

Who will benefit? In addition to the more than 10 million American television viewers with significant vision loss, the epidemic of vision loss among seniors that is expected over the next 25 years means that an ever-expanding population of millions of viewers will only be able to enjoy full access to video programming with the aid of video description. Perhaps even more significant than access to entertainment, description of emergency information is needed to allow this sizable population to understand and appropriately respond to warnings of hazardous weather and similar emergency conditions. Moreover, given the unequivocal success of the captioning requirements, it is reasonable to expect that all viewers, regardless of disability, will benefit greatly from, and actively use, multi-modal (i.e., visual and nonvisual) information dissemination.

Current law: The Communications Act of 1996 authorized the FCC to conduct an inquiry to assess the appropriate means of phasing video description into the television marketplace. Although the FCC's response to this grant of authority was a modest requirement that broadcasters and other multimedia video programming providers in the top 25 major national markets provide video description on only four primetime programming hours per week,[1] the broadcast and cable television industries successfully pursued litigation to overturn this mandate.[2] As a consequence, currently there are no federal requirements to make television programming accessible through video description, nor is similar access to on-screen emergency information required.

Why it is not enough: Video description is essential to ensure a measure of equal access to television programming for people who are blind or visually impaired. In addition to the now-moot FCC description requirements, it is all but certain that existing law will be read to bar the FCC from issuing rules that would require broadcasters to make emergency information available to the widest possible audience through description or similar narration of on-screen warnings or alerts.

Technical and economic feasibility: During the period in which the FCC's video description rules were in effect, national broadcasters routinely demonstrated the technical and economic feasibility of description by adding this feature to their programs. With the advent of digital television, it will soon be easier than ever for broadcasters to build into the digital structure ways to pass video description along to viewers. In fact, it is imperative to immediately require that the DTV standard include video description while DTV is nascent, because the failure to do so may lead to greater technical and economic obstacles to providing description in the future.

[1] Report and Order, In re Video Description of Video Programming, 15 F.C.C.R. 15230 (FCC July 21, 2000) (No. 99-339), available at http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/vd-order.doc, as amended in part by, Memorandum Opinion and Order, In re Video Description of Video Programming, 15 FCCR 1251 (FCC Jan. 4, 2001) (No. 99-339), available at http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/VD_Recon_Order.doc

[2] These rules were struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, 309 F.3d 796 (D.D.C. 2002)