Virtual Silence

I logged on to whitehouse.gov for President Obama’s virtual Town Hall Meeting, only to discover the video feed was not captioned. My cochlear implant, a miracle but far from perfect, makes me a member of the statistical 10 percent of the population which is hearing disabled. Thanks for network television. How can I utter such an absurdity? Life is full of contradictions and puzzlements. Congress required commercial television to provide captions. Thanks for Congress. Another two-edged utterance. Most new movies for rent at Blockbuster and Hollywood Videos are captioned. A limited few shopping mall movie houses offer captioned showings. Last week, my wife and I enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire, Oscar winner for best film, during lunchtime on Sunday at Atlantic Station. It has been a while since we went to a theatre to see a movie that was not a foreign language film with English subtitles. Check out my blog NOW SHOWING…With Captions, which I update weekly with times and locations of local movies captioned for the hearing impaired. Would you want to see those movie selections at those times of day? Worse is the situation with videos on the internet, virtually never carrying any captions.

The behind the ear processor of my cochlear implant can be connected directly to the audio of my television set, cassette tape or cd player, and some landline telephones. However, I am not able to hook up to my cell phone. I have to turn on the speaker-phone feature, and my guess is not as good as yours as to what the person is saying on the other end of the phone call. I wanted to get one of those little portable, battery operated televisions for picnics and other outdoor fun. However, the requirement to make televisions capable of displaying captions does not apply to screens smaller than 13 inches. My universal television remote contains 45 buttons in black, gray, orange, red, green, yellow, and blue. None of them will turn on the captions.

Many federal laws have been enacted over the past 20 years to require greater access to telecommunications. However, fast-paced technological advancements outrun the laws. Television programs re-shown on the Internet are not covered by caption requirements, even if originally broadcast with captions. Small TVs, cell phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices are not required to display captions, despite the technical capability. Emergency 9-1-1 call centers cannot accept calls from people who need to communicate via video, pagers or other assistive devices.

A 21st Century Telecommunications and Video Accessibility Act, introduced in the last session of Congress, would correct some of these exclusions from modern media. I signed petition by The Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT) to have the bill reintroduced in the current session of Congress and ensure that people with disabilities have access to evolving high speed broadband, wireless, and other Internet-based technologies.

Here are some of the issues advocated by COAT:

Hearing Aid Compatibility.

Accessibility to internet-based communication products and services, if "readily achievable," the same requirement currently imposed on all telecommunications manufacturers and service providers.

Equal access to 9-1-1 emergency call centers through voice, text, the Internet, video, and any other new technologies.

Universal Service Fund (USF) coverage for video calls, as well as specialized equipment for deaf-blind consumers.

Caption decoding and display capability for all televisions, recording, and playback devices, with screens of any size.

Captioning obligations for Internet-based video programming.

Control buttons to turn captions on and off.

Copyright 2009 by Williaqm C. Cotter