Web TV needs to have captions starting next month, the FCC rules

TV networks and web video sites will have to start providing closed captions for any TV content available online by the end of September, the Federal Communications Commission ruled a few days ago. The ruling reaffirmed the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which was signed into law by President Obama in October of 2010, as well as an FCC ruling from earlier this year. However, the industry got a bit of a break, with the FCC ruling that they won’t have to provide customizable captions until early 2014. Captions for web video have been a bit of a hot button issue for some time: Disability advocates have been arguing that web video providers aren’t doing enough to make their clips accessible to disabled viewers, and have actually sued both CNN and Netflix over missing captions. The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act only covers programming that’s also shown on TV, and exempts any online-only programming. Even TV news clips that have been edited for the web don’t fall under the requirement – but that likely won’t stop disability advocates from going after providers of these kinds of video.