COAT recommendation: Expand the scope of devices that must display closed captions under the Television Decoder Circuitry Act from the present requirement of television sets with screens that are 13 inches or larger, to include video devices of all sizes, including recording and playback devices, that are designed to receive or display analog, digital and Internet programming.
Who will benefit? Over 100 million Americans, including 28 million individuals with hearing loss, 30 million people for whom English is a second language, 27 million illiterate adults, 12 million children learning how to read and 4 million remedial readers.

Current law: The Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 (Decoder Act), 47 U.S.C. §§303(u); 330(b), requires that television receivers with picture screens 13 inches or larger contain built-in decoder circuitry designed to display closed captioned television transmissions. The FCC has also applied this mandate to computers equipped with television circuitry that are sold together with monitors that have viewable pictures at least thirteen inches in diameter, digital television sets that have screens measuring 7.8 inches vertically (approximately the equivalent of a 13-inch diagonal analog screen), and stand-alone DTV tuners and set top boxes, regardless of the screen size with which these are marketed or sold. The Decoder Act also requires the FCC to ensure that closed captioning services continue to be available to consumers as new video technology is developed.

Why it is not enough: There are three reasons why legislative change is necessary:

1. Traditional Television Sets. The 13-inch threshold established in the Decoder Act grew out of concerns that viewers would not be able to clearly read captions on screens smaller than 13 inches. Improvements in video displays, along with new digital technologies, have since eliminated this concern. At the same time, portable television sets are now more widely available (e.g., in hospital settings), and when battery-operated, may offer the only means for people with severe hearing loss (who cannot hear radio announcements) to acquire information in the event of an emergency. Because television sets with these smaller screens can now display captions, there is no longer any practical reason not to require them to have decoder capability.
2. New “Television” Apparatuses. Today many electronic devices which are not traditional “television sets” carry television-type video programming. Viewers can now enjoy their favorite television shows, as well as new Internet-based programming, in real-time, on their PDAs, computers, MP3 players, and even cell phones. These devices perform the same functions as did traditional television sets, but come in various shapes and sizes that are not presently required to receive and display captions. The Decoder Act’s mandate to continue to make captioning services available as new video technology is developed dictates that these modern innovations be capable of displaying captions to the same extent as traditional television sets. Although the FCC’s digital captioning rules have begun to expand the scope of devices that must have decoder capability, those rules do not go far enough to reach all of the newer technological innovations now on the market. Now that 100% of all new, non-exempt television programming must carry captions under the FCC’s rules, it is especially important that deaf and hard of hearing Americans be able to receive access to such programming on all television reception devices along with their hearing peers.
3. Playback and Recording Devices. Although VCRs are presently capable of playing back videos with captions intact, many newer playback and real-time recording devices, including those that depend on digital technologies such as DVD players and TiVOs, are often not capable of decoding and displaying captions. The industry itself admits that there is currently no plan to add a mechanism that will support the transfer of caption data from DVDs to receivers using the High-Definition Media Interface (HDMI) or component video connections; nor can the new high definition DVD players themselves decode and display the captions.[1] The inability to view captions via these devices poses a considerable hardship to deaf and hard of hearing viewers who are denied access to thousands of hours of video programming and who must rely on older, obsolete or lower-quality equipment and connections to maintain their caption viewing capability.

Technical and economic feasibility: The above devices are technically capable of decoding and displaying captions. As was the case for television sets covered by the Decoder Act, when decoder capability is required on all of these devices, the incremental cost of adding this technology will become negligible. Worth noting is that when the older DVD format was first developed and put on the market, it too neglected to support closed caption playback. After the deaf community raised concerns, manufacturers devised a technology for the carriage and display of closed captions via the common line 21 analog TV format. It is recommended that any and all video source/playback devices decode captions and pass the open-captioned signal to the display. This is the successful solution applied to cable and satellite set-top boxes for digital TV.

[1] The new HD-DVD and BluRay advanced DVD formats were developed without including closed caption data support or playback.