Ep. 16 - Getting Ahead of the New DOJ Title II Rules: What Small-Budget Stations Need to Know

What do folks need to be looking out for with the ADA requirements that just came out? Well, with the ADA requirements, local governments really are subject to the ADA. And I think in most cases, the access organizations that have contracts with the local governments probably are too. The ADA does require that every local government do some type of due diligence on being able to provide effective communications to the extent that it can. Every local government should be doing some type of audit of what they're doing for compliance with the ADA when it comes to their video and internet programming. What we've seen is an all time high in litigation relating to failure to comply with the ADA. You've seen a lot of litigation across the country on you know, local governments just failing to comply with the ADA at all, and not providing effective communications for disabled persons primarily through their internet streaming. This podcast is for city communications teams and video professionals in government. We talk about expanding service delivery with video and streaming, media accessibility, gear, broadcast and streaming workflows, and more. It's all right here on the Government Video Podcast. Hello, we're back on the Government Video Podcast, and I'm your host again this week, Michelle Alimoradi. We are back with Mike Bradley of Bradley Werner Law. Bradley Werner Law specializes in telecom issues and cable franchise renewals, and they work with access centers across the country to help PEG access and local governments serve residents and be compliant and do the best they can to get all the funding they need to, operate in their best state. Thank you again, Mike, for joining us. Always glad to have you on the podcast. Thank you, Michelle. Thanks for having me. Now, today we want to talk about an important ruling that came out earlier this year in April. This is updates to the Title II, Americans with Disabilities Act and the DOJ, they published a new document that focuses on the accessibility of websites and Mobile apps. Um, there's some specifics in what they want that come from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Um, there's some numbers and some letters. We'll get into those and what those mean a little bit later, but they provide a technical standard for web content and mobile apps that local governments will be required to meet by sometime in 2026. And some of that's dependent on how large your city is, um, you know, what you need to comply with and, and by when. Let's dig into that today and let's talk about what, what is new in this ruling and what we're not sure about yet and what folks need to start thinking about right now in terms of these new requirements. Well, thanks. Thanks, Michelle. And thanks again for having me on. You know, I, I think a lot of people initially will get confused about what rules apply to, to local governments. Is it the FCC rules? Is it the ADA rules? The answer is it's both. But with the FCC rules. We're largely, um, exempt from all of the FCC's closed captioning rules. Kind of across the board, but a number of years ago, the FCC had indicated that local governments and access organizations and access programmers, so actually all of the video programmers for access television, um, organizations would have to annually certify compliance with the closed captioning rules. I think that was probably an oversight by the FCC. I don't think they really meant to cast that wide of a net for video programmers to, uh, report compliance with. And so just a few weeks ago or a couple of weeks ago, the FCC released a further notice of proposed rulemaking that is basically suggesting that access, video programmers will be exempt from its, um, certification process. And I think that's a really good development and local governments across the country and access organizations should submit comments, uh, indicating their support for those rules. So, if you're a, uh, access organization or local government listening to this podcast, you know, reach out and find ways of, you know, of commenting in that proceeding to support, uh, that rule. That will largely eliminate, uh, local governments from having to, worry about compliance with the FCC rules, which would then take us to the ADA rules. And so, they're exempt from which FCC requirements? So there's, yeah, so there are, there are FCC rules in place that require closed captioning of video programming, and local governments are largely, there's an exclusion for organizations that make less than two million dollars a year, for example. Well, there's no access organization in the country that makes over two million dollars, I don't think. So we're largely exempt, except from that reporting requirement. And we've been waiting for years for that reporting requirement to kick in because it, it's related to, Because there's no mechanism by which to, To report. To submit, To submit. Yeah. So, so the FCC said about eight years ago that, uh, there'll be this reporting obligation and it'll start once we, once we get the, the internet application up and running. Well, it's never gotten up and running. Um, so we haven't had, none of us have had to comply with that obligation yet. But thanks to ACM and others, the Alliance for Community Media and others, that issue's been brought forward to the, uh, to the FCC and we're just now seeing that, that exclusion for local governments and access organizations and access producers will, will likely be put into place. So those are the FCC rules and the current status. And we talked about how the period for submitting comments on that change is currently still open. Right? It is. Yeah, we don't know when the deadline is yet for submitting comments because it starts upon publication in the Federal Register, which hasn't happened yet. will be in the next, I'm sure, next 45 days. Probably. And we're currently recording this at the end of July. So just for reference, um, yes. So let's get into the ADA. Um, what do folks need to be looking out for with the ADA requirements that just came out? Well, with the ADA requirements, local governments really are, are subject to the, to the ADA. And I think in most cases, the access organizations that have contracts with the local governments probably are too, since agents are generally included in that, um, those requirements for providing effective communications to residents. So in the past, we knew that local governments needed in their video programming and really their internet programming as well that we needed to make sure we were providing effective communication. There are some assumptions that we would make about what effective communications, entailed and, and so a lot of people, um, assume that it included closed captioning, I think rightfully assume that. Yes, I believe consumers have really come to expect closed captioning, whether or not it's for hearing impairments or any, or just because it's so ubiquitous across social media, in particular, now that it feels, you know, It's almost more jarring to have it not available than, than what it is at this point. Yeah, I think that's right. And uh, so there's this, there's the requirement in the ADA that, that effective communication be provided with, effective communication includes, uh, closed captioning. Uh, the ADA does have some exceptions for closed captioning. Uh, undo burdens from complying with all of the requirements of the ADA. That's done on a case by case basis and, the ADA does require that every local government do some type of due diligence on being able to provide effective communications to the extent that it can. So, every local government should be doing some type of Of audit of what they're doing for compliance with the ADA when it comes to their video and internet programming. They should also have a plan for how to make sure that they're meeting the needs of disabled persons uh, in their community. And when it comes to that word effective, um, we've talked about how that leaves some ambiguity there. Have you seen any legal action brought forth that attempts to get more specific as to what is effective. What have we seen? Yeah, you know, what we've seen is an all time high in litigation relating to, um, failure to comply with the ADA. Not so much on what is effective or not effective, Uh, most of the lawsuits that, that I've seen are, uh, situations where the government really didn't do anything. You've seen a lot of litigation, across the country on, you know, local governments just failing to comply with the ADA at all, and not providing effective communications for, disabled persons through their, uh, Primarily through their, their internet streaming and , And who, who's bringing forth this litigation? Well, they're, they're being brought forth, uh, by essentially class action type attorneys, on behalf of disabled persons. So, uh, you're seeing, a lot of that, and you can see that it would be pretty easy for, a law firm that was so inclined to, That's not my law firm, by the way. Um, we want you, we want to make sure that you're compliant and you avoid these lawsuits. Um, but, yeah, thank you. Um, but you can see how easy it would be for a, a law firm to just have somebody, an investigator, a law clerk, somebody, just look at a certain area and say, okay, look at the websites for every one of these cities in this area and tell me which ones have captioning and which ones don't. And then the ones that don't, will bring a lawsuit. So you can see how easy that might be. But to your point on what constitutes effective communications, I think these new rules really help us get there to some extent. So, um, as you mentioned, the Department of Justice released new rules on April 24th, 2024, relating to, how local governments, and I would suggest their access organization counterparts need to provide effective communications for web content and for, uh, mobile apps. And I think when you're looking And we see a lot more detail, um, with regard to effective communication or accessible content in this ruling that we've seen in yeah, absolutely forever anything. Yeah in anything that's coming for it. Yeah Yeah, no, I I totally agree with that. And so when these rules were released they they issued these new standards and they're based on this web content accessibility guideline. So WCAG, uh, 2. 1. It's going to be really important now for local governments to be looking at, at this standard. And we'll provide a link that we can include, to your, subscribers here on just where that standard can be, can be found. But folks need to know that there's a AA, double A, AAA standard under, under this, uh, 2. 1 WCAG standard. Okay. It's the double A level that the Department of Justice adopted. So we need to know that we're looking at the double A standard. Then we also need to know I've I've heard Different details on that. So it is the double a standard that they're not the double a level. Okay? Yes, and it's the standard from 2018. So that's the other little twist Uh, in these rules, it's the 28th standard, and there's newer standards, actually, so. Well, and, and I think one thing that's interesting is, so these standards that they're enforcing are not something that they came up with on their own, it's something that was actually developed by the, uh, World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, for folks in that web, development world, and so, it'll be interesting to see, you know, they're, they're not really taking on the responsibility of understanding web accessibility or web development on their own. They're just, they're looking to this other. Yeah. Adopting this, you know, more maybe independent type of standard or more well recognized type of standard. Yes. You know, the Department of Justice, besides releasing their rules, and again, we'll, we'll provide a link to the rules, and it makes for really good bedtime sleeping type of reading. It's their law. Uh, but they also released a fact sheet, which may be a little bit more digestible. We'll share that fact sheet with, with folks too, as well as the stand, the link to the standards. So. Yeah. We'll, we'll put all these links on our website at cablecast. tv. That will be in the blog post that we put out with this episode and folks can find those links there, but let's, let's keep talking about those details. Yeah, for sure. And so, you know, those standards kind of lay out the details. It's going to include captioning for, captioning requirements for live programming and also even audio description requirements. Yeah, that's a, that's a big one that is newer is this audio description component. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah, we have to dig into those rules and that's just, those are just two examples of the compliance that we need to look at. Hi, Michelle here. We hope you're enjoying this episode of the Government Video Podcast I'm taking a short break from today's discussion to remind you that this podcast is brought to you by Cablecast Community Media. We're a cross platform video solution from Tightrope Media Systems. And despite our name, we help cities, towns, and other local media organizations get their video to viewers on all digital platforms, including cable. If your organization operates a cable channel, um, but we help you reach residents whenever and wherever they watch. Be it on your city's website, on mobile streaming apps, on over the top platforms like Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV, or even on their mobile phone. And we even help you push your content live to social media. We've been helping small non commercial stations launch professional, affordable, and efficient video initiatives for over 25 years. And our customers love us because we have great customer support and we have fierce industry loyalty. So if your organization is in need of cross platform video automation and delivery for local coverage of city council meetings or other local events, reach out to our team and schedule a demo today. And if you do, be sure to mention that you heard about it here on the Government Video Podcast to receive a special discount. That's all for me for right now. Back to the episode. My suggestion really is, you know, if you're a local government or your access organization, and you're looking at complying with these new rules, I really think, they need to talk to equipment vendors to find out, you know, if their equipment is capable of meeting the standard or their current equipment is capable of maybe an upgrade or whatever to make sure that they are in compliance. So hopefully they're, they're talking with folks at your organization to make sure that, um, that, that they're in compliance. Another suggestion that I have is, uh, with some of this equipment, sometimes there's some cost sharing opportunities with other neighboring local governments, and so maybe that's an opportunity for local governments to, to look at as well. Yeah. And we've seen that at the state level with some organizations sharing equipment, um, and I think that that's a really great way to try to deal with these requirements. You know, there's a lot of automated tools out there for captioning. But audio description is a whole new, it's a whole new realm that folks are going to have to be looking into. And I am not aware of a low cost automated solution for audio description at this point. There's, you know, our, our Cablecast certainly supports the ability to have an audio description, audio channel, but we don't have a way for you to generate audio descriptions. So, um, that'll be interesting to see how folks handle that. Well, yeah, it will be for sure. And I, and I think that, um, some of the vendors will be, you know, kind of catching up to the standard as well. And so the good news is we don't have to comply with the standard immediately, right? So everybody has time, but we need to be aware of it. We need to be planning for it Moving forward, but the standard goes into effect for larger jurisdictions of 50 000 or more in two years so by April 26 2026 those jurisdictions greater than 50 000 Have to comply for basically everybody else including uh commissions of you know, multiple organizations the deadline for compliance is three years, so april 27th, 20 2027 is the the timing for for complying. And so I I think that you know local governments doing their planning should should also be you know Looking at well, how are the different ways that we could fund? the equipment purchases that we might need, uh, to be looking into moving forward and some of these ideas, uh, from Mike Wassenaar at ACM, which I thought were really good, but, some of those funding sources could include, grants from the Department of Education. It could include grants using the BEAD funding, and I would suggest, uh, BEAD funding, uh, particularly digital equity And can you please write that down for folks who don't know what BEAD funding is? Yeah. BEAD funding is, uh, federal broadband equity funding, and it's being largely used for, um, the build out to unserved or underserved areas of, the states across the country. Well, there's also a really significant amount of grant funding that's being made available for digital equity efforts. And I would suggest that this would be a very, very good, um, use of BEAD digital equity funding for local governments to use to make sure that there are compliance with these new Department of Justice rules. There's also, uh, DHS cybersecurity, opportunities, and perhaps Treasury Department fiscal recovery funds. I don't know a lot about those, but, you know, those are more opportunities that local governments, access organizations, uh, can look at. And if you're in a jurisdiction that's getting, you know, federal contract awards, sometimes those costs can be included in those, uh, contracts as well. So there's some different opportunities for outside funding, maybe that's beyond your franchise fee funding and your, your, you know, more normal access television funding that may, you know, help your organization get to full compliance, with some help from those, from those other grants. And shout out to Mike Wassenaar of the Alliance for Community Media for providing some of those suggestions for funding. Uh, we love Mike. We've had him on the show a few times as well. Yeah, he's a great resource for sure. Yeah. And the Alliance, yeah, the Alliance for Community Media as a, as a network is a great resource as well. And full disclosure, I am involved with them as a board member for their foundation. But I don't benefit from this financially at all for plugging them. Um, I also want to mention, you know,, I think audits are going to be a huge part of the reality of these regulations moving forward. And we also recently did, uh, an episode about audits for our listeners. I don't know if there's anything that you want to add with regard to that. I know there's, you know, some budget planning involved and, um, I'm not sure who folks should look to in terms of who can provide an audit to ensure that folks are complying. Do you have anything to add in that regard? Yeah, that's, that's actually something that we've, we have helped local governments with their ADA audits, specifically related to access television, which is sometimes for, uh, especially larger jurisdictions that they may do a, a really fulsome type of, of review, but, we have helped local governments determine what their access obligations are or their, uh, ADA compliance obligations are. And that working with, an organization like Municipal Captioning, for example, on, identifying what type of equipment is necessary, what are the costs, Those types of things for complying with the ADA and, and the, uh, associated rules. Awesome. Yeah. Full disclosure, we worked with Municipal Captioning, uh, with Daniell from Municipal Captioning on our audit episode that we put out recently. So if folks want to hear from Daniell in, in more detail, you can take a listen to that episode. Um, again, we're recording this at the end of July. Sometimes I never know exactly when these new ones are going to come out. But The Audit episode has just been released about a week ago now at this point. I would much rather listen to the episode with Daniell than the episode with Mike Bradley, I'm sure. Come on now. He's always fun. We love having you on, Mike. Um, well, so thank you so much, um, and we'll, you know, we'll continue to check in with you on this evolving topic, because this is kind of a, a new frontier, and folks are really going to be kind of learning as they go and figuring out not only how to do this, but, um, who's, who's watching and who's consuming, um, these new things like audio descriptions that folks are going to be expected to provide. So thanks again, and I'm sure we'll be bringing you on again to navigate more changes on this and and all the other topics that are important to our industry. So thanks again, Mike Bradley of Bradley Warner Law. And thanks, Michelle. Really appreciate the time. Glad to have you on the Government Video Podcast.