Telecommunications Act of 1996

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 represents one of the most significant and broadest-reaching pieces of communications legislation since the Communications Act of 1934, which established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and gave it jurisdiction over interstate telephone services. Though the elements of the law that were most discussed at the time were those related to media cross-ownership and the V-chip technology that blocked sexually explicit content, the act also added new requirements to make telecommunications technology accessible to Americans with disabilities.

Like the rest of the act, the portions relevant to Americans with disabilities reflected legislative awareness of how important telecommunications technology had become to American life. The rise of the Internet and cable television was the main motivating force behind the new legislation, which sought in part to address parents’ concerns over their children’s newfound access to adult material on television and online but presented an opportunity for a complete overhaul of telecommunications law. Section 255 required that manufacturers and service providers make access to their services available to people with disabilities if doing so is “readily achievable,” meaning requiring no significant extra expense. This applied to the makers of wired and wireless telecommunication devices, including all telephones, pagers, and fax machines; products such as computers that have a telecommunications aspect to them; and the equipment used by carriers to provide services. The U.S. Access Board was tasked with developing guidelines for telecommunications accessibility, which were released in February 1998. One of the goals was for all off-the-shelf communications equipment to be readily accessible to the deaf, and to allow the deaf to reap the same benefits as other Americans of the ongoing telecommunications revolution.

This section of the law was built on requirements stipulated in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which required a nationwide system of telecommunications relay services, for use by the deaf and those with speech impediments in order to provide for communication with hearing telephone users. In 1990, this service was available mainly to teletypewriter (TTY) users, but the rise of the Internet and development of telecommunications technology in general increased the options, and the 1996 act encouraged manufacturers to continue pursuing those innovations. For instance, telephone manufacturers began making captioned telephone services available.

The FCC was tasked with taking stock of closed captioning and developing a timetable for mandatory captioning. The FCC set a date of January 1, 2006, for English-language programming, and January 1, 2010, for Spanish-language programming, by which point all of a distributor’s new nonexempt video programming must be provided with captions. (Certain types of programming are exempt from the captioning requirement, such as anything broadcast in the “late late night” block between 2 and 6 a.m.)

The 1996 act was followed by a 2010 act, the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which updated the Section 255 requirements to cover new technologies and specific accessibility measures, including touch screens optimized for the blind, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone services compatible with hearing aids, and captioning for online video.

Section 255 is the section relevant to the deaf and

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