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At its June 8 open meeting, the FCC voted to adopt a Report and Order clarifying that interoperable video conferencing services must be accessible to, and usable by, people with disabilities as advanced communications services, under the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). The new rules will apply to video conferencing services widely used by consumers, such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and WebEx, as well as video conferencing platforms built for enterprise customers. At the same time, the FCC proposed new rules that would expand upon existing accessibility requirements to mandate that video conferencing services integrate better with telecommunications relay services (TRS) for people with hearing and speech disabilities by, among other things, requiring video conferencing platforms to add support for American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters. Software developers and providers of these services will have one year to bring video conferencing services into compliance, and to make sure accessible product support for these solutions is available to customers with disabilities.

For over a decade, the FCC struggled with expanding its CVAA regulations to video conferencing services, because it could not figure out what Congress meant by “interoperable.” Ultimately, though, it defined an interoperable video conferencing service as any “service that provides real-time video communications, including audio, to enable users to share information of the user’s choosing.” This broad definition encompasses not only the major consumer-facing services with which nearly every individual is familiar, but also video conferencing technologies built for use in the workplace. Thus, even if your company’s video conferencing platform is designed for and marketed exclusively to business customers, it is not immune from the new rules unless the product is covered by an existing FCC exemption.

In the accompanying Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC seeks comment on additional accessibility requirements. Specifically, it is considering requiring that video conferencing platforms support ASL and captioning for TRS users, and exploring how to give these users access to video conferencing through their preferred relay provider without being forced to dial into a meeting. Finally, the FCC wants public input on how the Interstate TRS Fund should best support TRS integration into video conferencing while protecting the TRS Fund from fraud, waste, and abuse.

If your company’s video conferencing services cannot yet be used by people with disabilities, the time to change this is now. And if your video conferencing service offers chat functionalities, as nearly all such services do, those functionalities must already accommodate a wide range of disabilities.

If you have any questions about your new obligations as a video conferencing service provider, or a maker of hardware or software used to access these services, please contact our digital accessibility expert, Michal J. Nowicki, Esq., at (703) 714-1311 or mjn@commlawgroup.com.

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