FCC Proposes IP Video Captioning Regime

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed requiring programmers to provide closed captioning for Internet and other IP-delivered video and requiring distributors to make sure it gets through to their viewers.

The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which passed a year ago next week, required the FCC to come up with rules requiring any online video that is closed captioned on TV to be closed captioned online and look into requiring captioning of web-originated video. The FCC says it only plans to require captioning of full-length programming, not outtakes or clips. Congress gave the FCC until Jan. 12, 2011 to come up with the new rules. In a notice of proposed rulemaking Monday, the FCC proposed the captioning and pass-through obligations, as well as requiring that the quality of IP captioning be at least as good as that on TV, which would include being able to change format and size. That could be crucial given the size of some of the small screens IP video is accessed from.