Congress Passes Digital Disability Access Bill

The House passed the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (S. 3828). Among other things, the bill requires the captioning of any online video that is closed captioned on TV, and asks the FCC to study captioning of Web-original video. It also requires smart phones and other mobile devices to be accessible to the disabled, if that is achievable, and restores the FCC's video description rules thrown out by the courts in 2002. The bill passed the Senate last week.