Kathryn Hill

Please take a few minutes minute today to help improve accessibility on the Internet.

Backstory: (if tl;dr scroll down to “What’s Happening Today”)
While the Americans with Disabilities Act is a boon for accessibility, it was written 20 years ago and doesn’t cover the Internet. As technology evolves and new tools emerge, there is very little regulation ensuring that they will be accessible. Faster, cheaper broadband access is helping to move media onto the Internet. The world has changed progressively in 20 years. The way we learn, interact, and conduct business today is vastly different than it was 10, 20 years ago.

Examples of issues that this lack of regulation causes include but are not limited to:

• No captioning on Internet videos – even whitehouse.gov doesn’t add captions to their live video feeds, which I found surprising, since during Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008, all videos on his website had captions. And internet videos are not just for entertainment purposes; what about online learning/distance learning courses? Important business meetings conducted online?
• No real-time text support for online emergency services
• No video description for the blind on Internet videos

Last June, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced HR 3101 to the House. Full text of the bill can be read here. It is being called the “Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.”

Disability advocacy organizations are concerned that there are not enough representatives in support of HR 3101. HR 3101 is currently in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce where it is competing against thousands of other bills for attention. The current Congress (111th) will end in 2011, and if HR 3101 doesn’t pass before that, it will have to be reintroduced.

What’s Happening Today
The National Association for the Deaf has called for today to be HR 3101 Virtual Legislative Day and are urging the public to write, call, and/or phone their reps and get them to support the bill, and to re-tweet, blog, Facebook, email, smoke signal, etc about this event to help get attention. NAD is twittering at NADTweets and they’re RTing twitters from people who have been visiting the Capitol in person today and talking to reps, and reporting their progress.

The bill is not limited to new/current technologies and is written in a way that it will expand to include future technologies.

Useful links:

• List of current co-sponsors of HR 3101
• Find Your Rep
• Find your two U.S. Senators
• Information about today’s action day on NAD.org

Rick Boucher, the chair of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, has a copy of HR 3101 on his desk, but he hasn’t moved the bill. It’s important to contact him and urge him to support HR 3101 as other reps have said they won’t support HR 3101 unless Boucher moves it.

FAQ:

Q: “YouTube? How will that work? Also what is “the internet” do they intend to include all the Chinese, British, French & etc. sites too?”

Q: “Just wondering about the details. Do I have to CC a video if I want to upload it?”

A: The law would include any U.S.-run sites. HR 3101 doesn’t require captions on consumer generated videos on the Internet (e.g., individuals who post videos on YouTube).