FCC Emergency Captioning Rules Violated by Television Stations

Somewhere in America, a television reporter interrupts the regular programming, but the weather is calm; without a snowflake in sight. A graphic crawls across the screen announcing an emergency news bulletin. The closedcaptions explaining the emergency are blocked by the graphic crawl.

In another part of America at another time, a tornado has passed through a town and a tornado alert remains in effect. Trees are down and power is out in some parts of the city. Some schools have been closed, while others remain open. The local TV station interrupts the regular programming with an extended special program about the tornado. The station reports the locations of Red Cross shelters, and the roads and schools that are closed. A simple graphic is displayed on the television screen announcing, “Tornado Emergency – Tornado Alert in Effect.” The closed captions are blocked by the graphic.

Elsewhere in America, it is the eighth snowstorm of winter, and schools are closed again. Parents groan and arrange to stay home with their children. Everyone plans to spend a typical emergency closing day sitting around the television set. To the surprise of the deaf viewers, the closed captions have been blocked by a text crawling across the bottom of the screen continuously listing the closed schools for five hours! The crawl denies the deaf viewers the opportunity to watch regular television programs.

What’s the Emergency?

These are familiar and frustrating scenarios that have been experienced by many deaf and hard of hearing television viewers across the nation. The stations are violating new regulations from the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), effective August 29, 2000. The new regulations state that all television broadcasters are required to provide visual emergency announcements and closed captions that do not block each other.

Local Broadcasters Must Comply

Local broadcasters are obligated, by FCC rules, to make necessary local emergency announcements, such as weather warnings, school closings, chemical spills, large fires, earthquake, floods, or tornado warnings. Deaf or hard of hearing people must have access to this information. Critical details about the emergency must be provided in a visual format such as an open caption, closed caption, a scroll, or a crawl. These rules apply to information given during a regular programming, an unscheduled break, as part of continuing coverage, or any other means of televising an emergency. The FCC rules apply to all local broadcasters, cable operators, and satellite television services.

Under law, the television broadcaster must visually present any details about the areas that will be affected by the emergency such as school closings, bus route changes, evacuation orders, specific evacuation routes, locations of shelters, finding shelter in the home, road closures, and obtaining relief assistance. If the critical details are available visually, the television broadcaster is not required to caption everything about the emergency situation. Emergency information may not block closed captioning and closed captioning may not block the emergency information. The FCC has required a form of “visual” emergency information for over twenty years. The new FCC rules are much more explicit about how broadcasters should present emergency information.

Advocates Take A Stand

During the recent bouts of winter weather, deaf people in several communities contacted the NAD Law Center expressing their concerns about the emergencies and warnings appearing on television. Many local television stations did not provide visual emergency information. The NAD Law Center responded with information about the law and suggested the most effective remedies for their situations. In some cases, the NAD Law Center made direct contact with the television stations to explain to them how to comply with the FCC rules.

For example, a small earthquake shook Evansville, Indiana on December 7, 2000. The community of Evansville was prepared because a severe earthquake had been anticipated.

Throughout the day, the local news stations ran periodic updates about the earthquake through an emergency crawl. During the coverage, the news reports included interviews with Red Cross personnel and public safety officials. This information was not captioned or included in the crawl.

The failure to caption the news coverage prompted NAD member, Mary Jane Rhodes, to contact the NAD Law Center on December 7. Over the next few hours, the NAD Law Center contacted the general managers or chief engineers of the stations that did not caption their news notifying them of their problem. The stations were very responsive, agreeing to expand the information in the crawl, and to contact caption centers for information about providing real-time live captions during emergencies.

Another example of effective self-advocacy occurred in the wake of a severe snowstorm in Tulsa, Oklahoma on December 13, 2000. The snowstorm forced many schools to close for several days. All day and throughout the evening, the major broadcast stations ran a crawl with school closing information, as required by law. However, their crawl blocked the closed captioning on the regular television programming, for hours. This was a problem in the past, and despite calls to the station from concerned deaf citizens, the problem was never corrected.

During the Tulsa snowstorms, NAD member Glenna Cooper contacted the local stations by e-mail, to explain the problem and request that the general managers of the stations meet with local deaf leaders for a discussion about the issue. She sent a copy of her e-mails to the NAD. The NAD Law Center responded with the precise requirements as mandated by FCC regulations. This enabled Ms. Cooper to better explain the obligations of the television stations by quoting the specific regulations and directing the stations to the information on the FCC website.

This prompted the three major stations to immediately respond to Glenna’s emails. Within a day, they corrected the technical problem that that blocked the captions.

Unfortunately, the station managers were bitter about the experience. They felt that they put forth their best efforts to provide captioning of local news shows in addition to emergency crawls only to be criticized and not appreciated. One manager threatened to consider taking all captioning off of his channel!

The attitudes of the station managers compelled Ms. Cooper, deaf leaders from the Oklahoma Association of the Deaf, and the Tulsa community to encourage the Tulsa deaf community members to thank the station for taking action to make sure that the closed captions were not blocked by emergency crawls. Ms. Cooper’s bulletins to the deaf community listed the stations that had modified their captioning procedures and congratulated them on responding to deaf concerns quickly and efficiently. Ms. Cooper also established a task force of deaf individuals to meet with the television stations in January to thank them and continue to make sure they understand the needs of deaf and hard of hearing television viewers.

How To Make A Difference

Any time you have a complaint about closed captioning or other services during emergency broadcasts, first, contact the station manager or chief engineer. Often, problems with captioning happen accidentally and the stations may be willing to fix it quickly.

If this first step is unsuccessful, viewers may file a complaint to the FCC by any letter, fax transmission, telephone, TTY, or e-mail. The complaint should include the name of the television broadcaster or programmer, the date and time of the incident, and the type of emergency that occurred. Complaints can be sent to:

Federal Communications
Commission (FCC)
445 12th St. S.W.
Washington D.C. 20554