McCormick Supports Updating Communications Accessibility Law June 10th, 2010
The telecom industry strongly supports a House bill that would update the nation’s laws providing accessibility to communications for disabled Americans, USTelecom President and CEO Walter McCormick said today at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing. The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009, HR 3101, would ensure that video description capability is made widely available not just for TV broadcasts, but also for certain video programming distributed over the Internet.
The bill reflects 15 months of detailed consultations between industry and the disability community, McCormick said. The proposed bill addresses the industry’s shift to IP-based communications. Among its highlights are enforcement procedures that would put remedies for noncompliance on a fast track; Lifeline and Linkup support for Internet access services for those who meet those programs’ eligibility requirements; and establishment of a committee to provide advice to the Federal Communications Commission and Congress on steps needed to ensure interoperable real time text communications in a national IP-enabled network for public safety.
“What our industry has found in the course of the last 25 years is that both we and the disabled community benefit from the certainty and focus that a sound and sensible legal roadmap for achieving accessibility provides,” McCormick said. “We believe that with such a roadmap, talented engineers and business people across the Internet landscape will respond in good faith to the challenge.” With Americans becoming increasingly reliant on communications devices and networks in their daily lives, it is essential that people with disabilities have access to the latest technologies.