Last summer, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued four Advance Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) to revise their Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations. In an ANPRM, the DOJ seeks feedback to update its regulations from various communities, including the public at large, consumer-based organizations, legal groups, the industry, and appropriate governmental entities if applicable.
On January 24, 2010, the NAD filed comments for the ANPRMs, advocating for proposed regulations and application of regulations that would best benefit the deaf and hard of hearing community. The following is a summary of each NAD comment to the DOJ ANPRMs:
Web Accessibility
The NAD advocated for the DOJ to adopt heightened standards that would require access to websites of state and local government and businesses open to the public. In particular, the standards would ensure visual access to aural context – including captions and/or transcripts for videos, streaming movies, webinars, online tutorials, online courses, and webisodes. The NAD demanded that such standards be effective immediately, without allowing covered entities to discriminate against deaf and hard of hearing users any longer.
NAD Comments on Web Accessibility DOJ ANPRM
Movie Captioning
The NAD rejected the DOJ’s proposal that would require movie theaters to show closed captioning at 50% of movie showings within a 5-year time period. This, we believed, would not provide deaf and hard of hearing moviegoers with full access and equal enjoyment as promised by the ADA. Instead, we maintained that movie theaters must provide captions for all of its movies, at all time, immediately. The law, we explained, already provided for an undue burden defense – a strict, case-by-case determination of whether an entity is able to provide a particular aid or service. We also pushed for on-screen captioning.
NAD Comments on Movie Captioning DOJ ANPRM
NG 9-1-1
The NAD asked the DOJ to ensure that 9-1-1 call centers using NG 9-1-1 be able to accept text messages of any kind – directly without having the deaf or hard of hearing individual connect to a text relay service provider first. Similarly, the NAD explained that it was crucial that each call center be able to accept video calls directly, without having the deaf or hard of hearing caller connect to a video relay service provider first. If a call center uses an interpreter, we insisted that the interpreter have heightened, specialized training in dealing with emergency calls.
NAD Comments on NG 9-1-1 DOJ ANPRM
Equipment and Furniture
The NAD sought to ensure that all equipment and furniture provided by all state and local entities and by all public accommodations are fully accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing. This includes electronic equipment, kiosks, ATMs, point of service devices, drive-thrus and alarms. We specifically demanded that exercise equipment come with TVs with captions. We also asked that medical equipment that shares information aurally be able to present the same information visually.