Deaf consumer groups file complaint against Amazon for lack of captions

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Thursday, 3 January 2013 12:42pm

Seven American deaf consumer groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), accusing Amazon of violating new captioning rules.

The new rules are included in the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, and came into effect on 30 September 2012. They state that most full-length, non-live programming must be captioned if previously broadcast on television with captions. Monitoring of programming available on Amazon’s ‘Instant Video’ service in October and November showed that between one and eighteen programs a day were not captioned which should have been. They included popular programs such as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Fringe.

The groups which filed the complaint include the National Association of the Deaf, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network. They contend that Amazon has no excuse for failing to caption these programs, considering that it was a participant in the FCC’s Video Programming Accessibility Committee, which determined how the new rules regarding captioning of online videos were to be implemented.
 
For more information, read this article on the Coalition of Organisations for Accessible Technology website.

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