Last month the NCRA Captioning Committee sent a call to action encouraging NCRA members to participate in a letter-writing campaign to the Federal Communications Commission’s Disability Rights Office (FCC DRO). The goal of the letter, which was drafted by the NCRA Captioning Committee, was to inform the FCC DRO that a myriad of local television stations in the top 25 Designated Market Areas are not adhering to the FCC’s caption quality best practices. Many of you answered the call to action and flooded the FCC’s inbox with the letter. The FCC responded to members’ effective grassroots advocacy efforts and is now requesting specific complaints from members and caption providers.
For NCRA members who emailed the Captioning Committee’s letter or for members who are experiencing poor caption quality due to Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), please file a formal complaint with the FCC at www.fcc.gov/accessibilitycomplaints. For the complaint, the Commission needs specific information regarding instances of ASR captioning failures, including:
- The channel number;
- The channel name, network, or call sign;
- The name of the multichannel video programming distributor (for example, the cable or satellite provider), if applicable;
- The date and time that the captioning problem occurred;
- The name of the program involved; and
- A detailed description of the captioning problem.
The Commission has indicated that NCRA members may also contact video programming distributors (VPD) directly to address issues concerning caption quality.
Your efforts are direct evidence that by joining together, we can make a positive impact and make our voices heard to federal regulatory agencies. However, despite the progress we have made, we must continue our momentum and file specific complaints with the FCC DRO to ensure that the Commission adequately addresses the lack of adherence to the FCC’s caption quality best practices. Thank you for your help with this critical campaign. Please contact Jocelynn Moore, NCRA Director of Government Relations, at jmoore@ncra.org for any questions concerning the FCC’s complaint process.
