Communication and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) is an accessibility act that has been in effect since 1990, along with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). However, the CVAA only became a law in 2010. Since its establishment, the CVAA has significantly impacted communication and made it accessible to several million people with disabilities in the country.
Today, let’s take a look at what CVAA compliance is and everything that you need to do in order to be an entity compliant with the CVAA.
What is CVAA Compliance?
The Communication and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) is a section in the Accessibility Act that is responsible for making every modern communication channel and technology accessible to everyone, regardless of their disabilities. This act is set to lay some foundation rules for organizations that work with video programming. However, YouTube videos are set to have some rule exemptions under CVAA.
What are Advanced Communication Services?
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) characterizes advanced communications services as follows:
- Interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services
- Non-interconnected VoIP services
- Electronic messaging services
- Interoperable video conferencing services
These services encompass various forms of communication, such as text or instant messaging, video chat, voice chat, email, and real-time video interactions.
A clear definition of advanced communications was essential to address the ongoing debate about whether video games should comply with the CVAA. This is because many multiplayer games feature chat and messaging functions that fall under advanced communications, thus making them subject to CVAA regulations.
Why was the CVAA Passed?
The CVAA aims to enhance the accessibility laws, hence ensuring that everyone, regardless of their disabilities, can use telephones and watch television programs with equal ease. It also mandates that online television programs meet the same accessibility standards as those broadcast on network TV.
Smartphones are crucial for making emergency calls and receiving urgent information, such as evacuation orders or storm warnings. The Emergency Access Advisory Committee and others emphasized that this information is vital and should be universally accessible to people with disabilities, enabling them to protect themselves and stay informed.
Beyond emergencies, accessible telecommunications and video programming enable people with disabilities to engage with their community and interact with others as they choose. For instance, being deaf should not prevent someone from enjoying television shows.
What are the Two Titles Mentioned in CVAA?
There are two titles in the CVAA that define accessibility rules for video programming and other modes of communication. Organizations must comply with any of the titles that apply to them the most based on the services or products offered.
Title I – Communication Access
Title I of the CVAA focuses on enhancing communication features in products and services that use broadband, ensuring better accessibility for individuals with disabilities. This title covers several key areas, including:
– Ensuring advanced communication services are accessible to all users. These services encompass VoIP and non-VoIP services, text messaging, email, instant messaging, video programming guides, and video conferencing.
– Making mobile web browser user interfaces accessible for blind users.
– Increasing FCC engagement with consumer complaints and reporting.
– Improving compatibility of hearing aids with communication services.
– Allocating funds for specialized equipment tailored to users with disabilities.
Title II – Video Programming
Title II ensures that people with disabilities can easily access TV and internet content produced by video programmers who follow FCC regulations. Key provisions under this title include:
– Rules for audio descriptions.
– Requirements for closed captions.
– Increased FCC oversight.
– Mandates that emergency information be accessible to those who are blind or people with visual impairment.
– Requirements that TVs and other video devices have a button, icon, or key for enabling closed captions, video descriptions, and audio descriptions.
– Ensuring on-screen menus and guides are accessible to users with visual impairment.
To Whom Does the CVAA Apply?
If you are publishing content that was previously aired on television, then you must abide by CVAA, as online video captioning is important for every content distributor and video creator.
- Video programmers must ensure their content adheres to FCC caption quality standards and provide closed captions for all applicable programming.
- Video Programming Distributors (VPDs) are tasked to repeat these captions and guarantee their proper maintenance and delivery.
As a video programmer, you also need to provide annual certifications to the FCC that adhere to the following:
- Compliance with the FCC rules of captioning
- Implementing best practices for meeting captioning standards
- Determining if they qualify for an exemption from closed captioning rules
Video programmers are required to provide the FCC contact details of the individuals in charge of ensuring captioning compliance.
Video programming distributors (VPDs) no longer need to secure certifications from video programmers regarding captioning compliance. Instead, they must carry out annual reviews of captioning complaints and take appropriate action.
Video programmers must handle any complaints related to the creation, quality, or delivery of captions that are forwarded to them by VPDs.
What are the Benefits of CVAA Compliance?
As an organization, you can benefit from complying with CVAA in several ways. Below are some points of advantages you get for CVAA compliance:
1. Wide Audience Reach
By complying with CVAA, organizations can make their content accessible to everyone, regardless of their disabilities. This opens the door to a set of a wide audience and broadens revenue for the organization.
2. Minimized Legal Risk
Violation of CVAA compliance can lead to several legal troubles for an organization. This means the company will also need to incur penalties and suffer legal problems. By being compliant with CVAA, organizations can position themselves better for addressing claims and decrease their risk of running into legal troubles, hence avoiding heavy and costly violations.
3. Elevated Search Presence
Transcription audio and visual files make them more discoverable. When these files become discoverable, search engines can crawl them and rank the content based on adherence to their algorithm, making your content increase its search presence.
4. Better User Experience
Ultimately, the main goal of any organization should be to elevate its user experience in order to bring in more revenue. In order to give a better experience, making the UI/UX more accessible for every user can enhance accessibility, reach people with disabilities, and provide them with a better experience in consuming content.
How to Meet CVAA Requirements
You need an immediate two-step action plan for your organization to meet the requirements of CVAA compliance that are already in effect:
- Retain the technical expertise required for CVAA compliance
- Retain a legal counsel who is experienced in the Communications Regulatory Law
Once you follow the above two-step action plan, you need to take the below steps to meet CVAA requirements:
- Determine the most frequently accessed audio-visual content and start by ensuring that these materials are accessible.
- Establish a process where all new content is captioned and made accessible from the start.
- Focus on the accessibility of current audio-visual assets, prioritizing those that are essential for your site's users.
- Verify that the audio-visual players on your site are compatible with assistive technology.
What are the Penalties for Non-Compliance with CVAA?
If an entity does not comply with CVAA requirements, the FCC has the right to issue a notice of apparent liability to let the entity know that they will be issuing a heavy fine on the organization for the absence of accessibility in their content.
Once this notice is issued to an entity, they have the right to provide evidence in their defense. Further, the FCC is also allowed to issue fines on companies and networks that do not comply with CVAA requirements that give out 21st-century technologies or communication programs.
Note that the fines can add up to thousands of dollars per violation. This can become extremely expensive for organizations as opposed to simply complying with the CVAA requirements.
Who can be Exempted from CVAA Compliance?
User-generated content falls outside the scope of CVAA compliance. This exemption allows independent content creators who aren’t associated with established TV networks to post videos on platforms like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and others without adhering to CVAA guidelines. While YouTube does provide an automatic subtitle feature to enhance accessibility, these subtitles are generated by machines and frequently lack accuracy.
Bottom Line
While complying with the CVAA requirements is mandatory according to the law, it is up to the organization to make online videos accessible to everyone, regardless of their disabilities. With the addition of video and audio descriptions and captions, an organization can reach more audiences and increase its content needs, making the content consumable to more people, regardless of their disabilities.
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