Thursday Start Date for Passing Through Emergency Information on Secondary Audio Stream

Video programming distributors had to ensure starting Thursday that televised emergency information conveyed visually outside newscasts is also being conveyed aurally through a secondary audio stream, the FCC Media Bureau said in a reminder public notice Wednesday. The rule change, approved in April as part of FCC implementation of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, is intended to allow the blind and visually impaired to receive the same emergency information often made available on TV through text crawls, the PN said.