WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Media Bureau of the FCC this week released an Order that extends an existing waiver of a rule that would require broadcast TV stations to provide an aural representation of visual, non-textual emergency information that is displayed during non-newscast programming.
This would impact such visuals as radar maps or other graphics about an impending weather emergency that are displayed in the corner of a TV screen during regular programming.
This is known as the “audible crawl rule”, and the never-implemented rule is intended to eventually ensure accessibility to such graphic images for blind and low vision people. However, it is established across the industry that the FCC put the cart before the horse when it passed the rule, as the technology needed to make this come to life is yet to be perfected. There’s also the cost associated with implementing it.
The current Commission and Media Bureau Chief Erin Boone understand this, and the new Order released April 8 grants an additional extension for an 18-month period, through November 29, 2027, or until there is a ruling on a pending NAB petition for rulemaking, whichever is sooner.
The order acknowledges the fact that the critical details about an emergency provided in such images form are usually duplicative of information conveyed in textual crawls that are translated into aurally accessible speech, and is tied to a petition for rulemaking filed by the NAB in November 2024.
In the petition, the nation’s largest advocacy group for radio and TV broadcasting companies asked the Commission to amend the audible crawl rule to specify that compliance with the rule is fulfilled if a station provides aurally accessible text crawls that provide duplicative or equivalent information to the information conveyed by the radar map or other visual image.
For the NAB, “this approach will provide broadcasters the regulatory certainty needed to continue displaying such graphics while ensuring access to emergency information.”
