Compliance Deadline for Video Description of Non-Textual Emergency Information Displayed During Non-News Programming
The FCC’s Audible Crawl Rule has been in effect since November 2015, and all television stations must be prepared to comply with a new portion of the rule by May 26, 2018. The portion of the rule that becomes effective (after two extensions of time granted by the FCC) on May 26, 2018, relates to non-textual emergency information displayed on-screen during non-news programming. All such non-textual emergency information—e.g., maps, radar images, and the like—must be “translated” into spoken text for transmission on a secondary audio stream beginning May 26, 2018.
