ANSWER: From the Federal Communications Commission: “Closed captioning displays the audio portion of a television program as text on the TV screen, providing a critical link to news, entertainment and information for individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Congress requires video programming distributors (VPDs) to close caption their TV programs.
“FCC rules apply to all television programming with captions, requiring that captions be:
“Accurate: Captions must match the spoken words in the dialogue and convey background noises and other sounds to the fullest extent possible.
“Synchronous: Captions must coincide with their corresponding spoken words and sounds to the greatest extent possible and must be displayed on the screen at a speed that can be read by viewers.
“Complete: Captions must run from the beginning to the end of the program to the fullest extent possible.
“Properly placed: Captions should not block other important visual content on the screen, overlap one another or run off the edge of the video screen.
“There are two categories of exemptions from the closed captioning rules, self-implementing and economically burdensome:
“Self-implementing exemptions include public service announcements shorter than 10 minutes and not paid for with federal dollars, programming shown from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., and programming primarily textual. There is also an exemption for locally produced non-news programming with no repeat value.
“The FCC has established procedures for petitioning for an exemption from the closed captioning rules when compliance would be economically burdensome.
“You may contact your VPD to report the problem at the time that the problem occurs to see if you can get the problem fixed. You can find your VPD’s contact information on your bill, or, if you have broadcast only TV, the contact information for the TV station should be in the phone directory.
“For captioning problems during non-emergency programming, you may file a written complaint with either the FCC or your VPD. If you file your complaint with the FCC, the FCC will forward the complaint to your VPD. FCC rules require that your written complaint must be filed within 60 days of the captioning problem. After receiving a complaint, either directly from you or from the FCC, the VPD has 30 days to respond to the complaint. If you filed your complaint with your VPD and they do not respond within 30 days, or if a dispute remains, you can send your complaint to the FCC.”
Filing your complaint by mail: Include include your name, address, contact information and as much detail about your complaint as possible and mail to:
Federal Communications Commission, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, Consumer Inquiries and Complaints Division, 445 12th Street, S.W., Washington, DC 20554.
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