APEX Engages on DOT’s Plans for Closed Captioning

    Share

    130_AUG-ApexPages.jpg“I have been trying for some time to get airlines to provide closed captions on the movies on their airplanes,” said United States Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in June. “I can’t understand why they don’t do it. It doesn’t cost anything.”

    “If all video content on aircraft flying to US airspace [is] required to carry closed captions, it will [have] a huge economic impact,” said a respondent to the APEX membership survey in April. Citing the costs involved, another said, “If we had to close-caption everything… I doubt whether my business would continue.”

    Which of these statements is accurate? None of them, according to Michael Childers, chair of the APEX Technology Committee, who has been dealing with closed captioning in in-flight entertainment (IFE) since prior to 2006 when the US Department of Transportation (DOT) first issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) saying that it would require closed captions on all video content on commercial aircraft flying in and out of the United States.

    In engaging the DOT in 2006, the World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA, predecessor to APEX) found that the agency was under the misconception that video monitors on commercial aircraft function like televisions on the ground where closed captions could be turned on and off by – in the words of the original NPRM – “the pressing of buttons that already exist on the television and audio-visual equipment.”

    By way of a white paper drafted in 2006 by Childers and Pierre Schuberth, currently with Thales, WAEA advised the DOT that because “(a)irline in-flight systems were not designed to accommodate broadcast closed captioning signals and technologies,” no such buttons existed in IFE. After a period of engagement between the DOT and the Technology Committee, during which the cost impact of an IFE industry conversion to caption capability outside of its anticipated migration into MPEG-4 (a flexible audio and video compression format) was described, the DOT announced in 2008 that it was putting its rule-making on hold and would monitor the applicable technology.

    In 2013 the DOT announced that it was re-opening its NPRM, again proposing to mandate closed captions on aircraft flying in and out of the US, and APEX is once again engaging with the DOT. “The costs are real, but can be contained,” says Childers. It is the responsibility of APEX’s Closed Caption Working Group (CCWG), chaired by Lumexis’ Jon Norris, to develop a technical specification for the industry that makes closed captions a reality at minimal cost.

    The state of the art in closed captions today is Timed Text. In 2010, the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) was signed into law requiring that all US video content on the Internet be closed captioned. The “safe harbor” technology for CVAA is Timed Text -specifically SMPTE Timed Text 2052, which is also codified in SMPTE’s Interoperable Master Format (IMF). Nearly all new content in the US has closed captions available in this form.

    However, few IFE systems support Timed Text. Analog systems do not. MPEG-1/2 systems generally support an earlier caption technology called “bitmap,” but in most cases only if they undergo substantial and costly software updates. MPEG-4 systems deal more readily with Timed Text, but the most common Timed Text still requires costly conversion to be usable in IFE.

    APEX and its CCWG are challenged to define the most efficient technical specification, evaluate the costs and implementation schedule, and deal with the more limited availability of closed captions outside the US. They must then convince the DOT, Sen. Harkin, and other interested parties to consider all of these factors in the eventual rule.