Communications Access/Captioning

AG Bell supports legislative and regulatory mandates for providing caption and communication access in all public venues, i.e., workplace and school environments, public lectures and speeches, sporting events, live performance venues, museums, movie theaters, broadcast (television and radio) content, multimedia and Internet content. AG Bell also supports access to personal technology such as Video Relay Service, captioned telephones and adaptive technologies for mobile telephone use.

AG Bell supports legislative and regulatory initiatives to promote the appropriate training and development of qualified professionals in the areas of providing captioning services, the handling of relay or TTY (voice and sign) calls, and of communications assistants as per captioned telephone.

AG Bell encourages the development of future captioning technologies (both open and closed) to increase captioning accessibility, such as speech recognition software and c-print. Should a form of captioning technology be developed in the future that is superior to today's options, then AG Bell believes that technology can be phased in to replace aging captioning units currently in use.

AG Bell supports the maximum availability of communications access and accommodation for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing regardless of preferred communication mode.

Approved by the AG Bell Board of Directors on June 24, 2010.