Complexities and Lack of Requirements Make Audio Description Inconsistent, Say FCC Panelists

The complexities of the content distribution system, a lack of uniformity among different platforms and absence of regulatory requirements are among the reasons for inconsistency in which online content includes audio description, said panelists from streaming services and consumer groups at the FCC’s Video Programming Accessibility forum Monday.

The FCC could aid in the proliferation of online audio description by creating standards and guidelines to create industry-wide “synchronicity,” said Petr Kucheryavyy, Charter senior manager-Accessibility Center of Excellence. When guidelines aren’t backed up by requirements, many companies choose not to make content accessible, said Satauna Howery, a voice actor who narrates audio description tracks. “The reason we have requirements and laws is because when you allow industry to simply go it on their own, you get the complexities and inconsistencies that we were talking about,” she said.

The FCC has audio description requirements for broadcasters and MVPDs, said American Council of the Blind Director-Advocacy and Governmental Affairs Clark Rachfal. It would be “appropriate” for the agency to revisit the question of whether streaming services are MVPDs, he said. The affiliate associations for the top four networks recently made a similar push in lobbying visits to FCC commissioners (see 2203170056). Rachfal said he believes the FCC has authority to do that but might require additional authority from Congress to go further with imposing requirements on online content.

“Technical and business concerns” can affect whether a given piece of online content has audio description, said Lori Samuels, NBCUniversal senior director-accessibility. Numerous panelists speaking at the event represented media companies that voluntarily provide audio description for much of their online content, including NBCUniversal, Paramount Global, Apple, Charter and Amazon. Prime Video requires its original content to feature video description, and pushes for it with newer content, but older or third party content in its library may not always carry the feature, said Daniel Kocmarek, general manager-global video supply chain and content operations.

Paramount Global Regulatory Counsel Martha Heller said sometimes content can be audio described on one service or in one format and then not have that capability in another service or on another device, sometimes due to differences in capability. “Some cable partners won’t have the capability to offer audio description for video on demand files,” and not every service in a distribution chain will request an audio described version. These inconsistencies are being worked out in the marketplace over time “as audio description becomes more of an expectation,” she said.

Industry representatives and consumer advocates agreed the availability of audio description is steadily improving. “We are generating more public awareness of the issue,” said American Council of the Blind Audio Description Project co-Chair Carl Richardson: “It’s just something we have to stay on top of.” Closed-captions followed a similar arc with many inconsistencies until the industry standardized a process after captioning requirements, said Heather York, vice president-marketing and government affairs for captioning and audio description company Vitac.

Richardson and other advocates said there can be large gaps in the quality of audio description. Text-to-speech systems based on AI and artificial voices rarely measure up to audio description narrated by a person who can convey tone and nuance, he said. Kocmarek said text-to-speech offerings shouldn’t be compared to human-narrated audio description but should be seen as a preferable alternative to no description at all for older content.