COAT Leaders Meet with Cable TV Engineers on HR 3101

On April 8, 2010, in a two-hour meeting, COAT leaders met with cable TV representatives to discuss some of the TV accessibility proposals in H.R. 3101. Specifically, the group focused on the technical feasibility issues in making set-top boxes accessible, including access to the electronic program guide. The HR 3101 provisions are found in Section 204, "User Interfaces Regulations," and Section 205, "Access Video Programming Guides and Menus."

The COAT steering committee -- AAPD, ACB, AFB, and NAD -- met with top engineering experts from Brighthouse, Comcast and TimeWarnerCable cable television companies and policy leaders at NCTA. COAT's technical experts were from COAT affiliates Inclusive Technologies and WGBH Accessible Media Center, and from Trace Research Center.

The discussion included viewing demos of the work conducted by Ocean Blue Software & COAT International Friend RNIB and by TalkingMythTV to make TV set-top boxes accessible to people with disabilities. The conversation included a summary of the history of cable TV deployment (beginning in the 1940s) as compared to satellite (began in 1970s) and telephone company (1990s) television distribution. This included description of the different types of infrastructures involved. It was noted also that it wasn't until the mid 1990s that program guides were first shown on cable TV, as a replacement for printed TV programming guides.

COAT advocates and technical experts urged the cable TV engineers and corporate representatives to establish soon some clear goals for set top box accessibility, with a date certain.  Cable company representatives said they needed to go back and talk among themselves about "what their next steps would be" and they would inform COAT. Similar technically focused meetings are expected to be scheduled.