raving lunacy - oxymorons for the 21st century

Closed Captioning of Commercial Television has been the law of the land since 1996. Its genesis was the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) which gave us wide doorways, grabbars, ramps and Handicapped Parking. Section 508 of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 mandated electronic and information technology alternative delivery methods such as closed captioning by government agencies.
This included websites, which has not been adopted completely by the government, and the Flash/AJAX development crowd has swept under the rug.

Ars Technica notes that there is a new Accessibility bill introduced into the House of Representitives.
New bill mandates closed captioning for Internet video
This is a remix/refresh of the Communications Act of 1934.
While the bill can be read to only apply to commercially produced video, the line between personal and commercial has been blurring on the internet for some time. Video sharing sites like YouTube who are trying to monetize themselves may be considered commercial soon. Other sites who use pre and post roll advertisements are definitely commercial.
Most digital cameras allow you to make video, so you can be seen by millions. With this legislation, the cost of video sharing will go up. It is one thing to provide closed captioning for the twitter whore, it is another level of complicated to provide a text description of somebody doing the funky chicken while jumping off his garage.

When you have a video that gets viewed 10 million times, and the closest commercial television program only has around 5 million there will be blood. The recent Drudge Retort AP copyfight points this out quite nicely, and that is a text argument.
Sites that wrap commercials around video or use pre and post roll advertisements are gonna get whacked.

Robert Scoble and Fast Company TV probably need to budget money for captioning equipment.

If you think that this or similar legislation is not coming, just think about who gets the best parking spots at your local regional lifestyle center. Do you want to be that person who says that folks with disabilities are not equal to you?
We live in interesting times.

H.R. 6320 is here
The National Captioning Institute has a good page of the current law.
Section 508

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the Web. It has come a long way.

Robert Scoble is wondering if the current Accessibility case against Target will require videobloggers to provide transcripts. His concerns are specifically YouTube and his ownself kyte.tv.

The short version is No. The reason is that both YouTube and kyte are not offering goods and services for sale to the public. You take your chances with free.
Target. com is selling goods and services to the public and is the latest court case to try and get folks to understand that Accessibility matters. That it is happening in California is a mixed blessing, as their laws are a cut and paste version of the US Section 508 Accessibility Standards.
Businesses are crying undue burden as their get out of customer card.
I wrote about this back in 2001

A little over a year ago I wrote an article here on the upcoming U.S. Accessibility Regulations for the web. Specifically on Section 508 of the WORKFORCE INVESTMENT ACT OF 1998, which required all United States Federal Agencies with websites to make those sites accessible to individuals with disabilities, within 24 months of enacting of this law.

Robert’s concerns are a bit of an oxymoron as most YouTube videos have a sound track which does go toward satisfying alternate delivery.

Accessibility has a varied and checkered past on the web. In the US, it is a requirement, which until now with the notable exception of the National Federation for the Blind’s sort of Victory over AOL, has not until this point been tested in court.
Target may just be the case that finally wakes up companies that want to do business with folks across the web, Flash designers are going to get their asses handed to them, and the folks who neglect using the  ALT  tag will find themselves in a real uncomfortable position of having redo websites to comply.