HR 3101 - Captioning for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing on Internet Media

[ravenvii]

HR 3101, the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009, is gaining momentum, and many of us hope it will be passed, paving the way for (respectable) closed captioning on iTunes, Hulu, et al.

Hulu has been doing a great job, but iTunes and all the other internet-based media service has been doing a horrible job. iTunes is the worst, with absolutely zero TV shows captioned, and less than 150 movies, out of 22,000, captioned.

If this bill gets passed, it will force Apple, et al, to put closed captioning on all television programs. This will have a ripple effect on movies (we hope), as seen by the effect of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 on DVDs (almost all of which have captions or subtitles, even though it was not actually explicitly required by law).

I'm posting this in hopes of spreading the word (and spreading the word further through you guys). We need this passed!

More information can be found in this newsletter:

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/posts/337330

 

[Thomas Veil]

As someone of middle age who finds myself missing chunks of dialogue because I'm losing my upper-range hearing, I'm all in favor of this.

 

[Ugg]

Wow! That's great! Thanks for link.

I hate iTunes, not only because there are no subtitles but because they throttle the volume to the point where I can't hear anything.

I didn't realize that hulu did subtitles, I'll have to check them out again. Netflix is hit and miss about advising whether there are subtitles or not.

 

[Zombie Acorn]

No one should be forced to cater to handicapped.

 

[-aggie-]

No one should be forced to cater to handicapped.

And women shouldn't be allowed to vote? Children should work in factories? We should still have slaves?

Welcome to the 21st Century.

 

[Counterfit]

You can't be serious.



Right?






Anyways, if passed, this shouldn't be too hard to implement. I'm pretty sure that the m4v container can handle a subtitle track that meets the requirements for closed-captioning already. I know Matroska definitely can.

 

[-aggie-]

^^^^
Make sure you note who you are talking to, okay?

 

[ravenvii]

Update: HR 3101 has been stuck in subcommittee limbo since June. Many representatives support the bill, but none of them are in the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications, Technology & the Internet, which is responsible for reviewing the bill and determining whether to pass it up to the House to vote on. A majority of bills never make it past this stage.

The chairperson of the subcommittee is Rick Boucher. Please contact him and voice your support for HR 3101 and urge him to bring it to the floor in the subcommittee. If you are a resident of the area of Virginia that he is a representative of, even better. If you know anyone who lives there, please let them know about this bill and urge them to contact Rick Boucher and urge him to bring HR 3101 the attention it needs.

Also, John Kerry is the chairperson of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee's Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet. Everyone who supports the bill should urge Kerry to bring up a Senate version of the bill.

We need HR 3101 passed - the legislature has fallen behind the times, and we need to bring it back up to date. This is essential, and if HR 3101 is passed, I know it will change many things for me personally and potentially millions of others. I can actually benefit from AppleTV and iTunes movies and TV shows for one!