Fuck the V-Chip - Where the Hell's My D-Chip?

The very idea that there should be federally mandated parental controls, commonly known as the V-Chip [note 1], built into every television sold in the U.S. when there is no analagous provision made for audio description (also known as DVS), as there is for closed captioning, makes me wonder whether, in fact, i do live in the land of the free and the home of the brave, not to mention whether or not the first amendment of the U.S. constitution applies to those of us who cannot process visual information.

However, on November 8, 2002, in blocking proposed FCC regulations which would provide baseline rules for the provision of video description for most mainstream programming, the Court of Appeals for the the DC Circuit [note 2] held that describing video is a violation of the first amendment rights of the copyright holders (in this specific case, the complainant was the evil-empiresque Motion Picture Association of America), as DVS, according to the court, does not provide an (ostensive) literal transcription of sound into text, as does closed-captioning, but involves the subjective description of people, places, and events, despite years of evidence (and rules-of-practice) that DVS does not editorialize, but, instead, sheds metaphoric light on a perceptual black hole.

If parents can censor their children via a government mandate, why can't i find out why the scary music is playing? why can't i hear someone tell me what it is the protagonist sees when he or she slightly parts the curtain, and how the hell am i to know that the curtain's being parted, or even the sex of the protagonist (not to mention any other distinguishing physical attributes which may play a critical role in understanding the events being portrayed) without description, anyway? i have every right to know the details no matter how slight, such as: why are the detectives cringing in horror at the sight before them? what is the season, the time of day, the current weather, the placement of the scene currently transpiring? not to mention equal access to the contents of the crawling text about which sighted friends and colleagues complain, but which contain the only real news not only on what pass for news channels, but on the local news as well. All public service announcements, which usually end with a statement such as "for more information call the number on your screen or visit this web site" whilst displaying a phone number and/or URI should be required to explicitly -- and without recourse to DVS -- provide a voice over that actually enunciates the pertinent phone number, web address, and whatever other further sources of information are offered visually.

As long as the country is being forced by the FCC to "go digital", at least as far as television is concerned by February 17, 2009 -- without, of course, providing for a means of shrinking, rather than widening, the digital divide -- isn't it feasible to provide multiple alternate audio streams, thereby enabling persons such as myself, who can't see the screen, the opportunity to have non-verbal, visually-conveyed information delivered to them, whilst also enabling a selection of non-English audio streams? Just don't make me choose from amongst a selection presented in an on-screen menu; give me a specific audio description button -- just as buttons dedicated to the sole purpose of toggling closed captioning on or off appear on most remote controls.

All of which begs the question:

If audio is described, but no one aurally alerts the audience so that audio description can be engaged, can that audio truly be said to be described?

• FootNotes
• Resources & References
• Who's Responsible for this drivel, anyway?

Notes

Note 1:

When i first mounted this rant on the web in February of 2006, it began with the complaint that not only wasn't there anything remotely resembling a D-Chip available, let alone federally mandated in every TV, but that the official V-Chip web site, was, itself, "less" than accessible, as a majority of the graphics which served as hyperlinks to individual broadcasters' information on their individual V-Chip compliance lacked ALT text -- a required attribute of the IMG (image) element). i am, therefore, overjoyed to report that, as of April 2006, the V-Chip site has done away with the graphical front page, and actually has become a model of accessibility.

The only reason i didn't condemn the site as completely inaccessible was because two of the five listed commercial broadcast networks -- namely, Fox and ABC -- provided textual equivalents to the graphical representations of their logos, on a site where the graphical representation of a network's logo serves as the hyperlink that points at that network's V-Chip information, thereby making them the only truly comprehensible hyperlinks -- the target of which is not only immediately identifiable, but discernable -- to those who, for whatever reason, can not visually perceive or process images, as well as those using a mode of accessing the page that either compromises the clear presentation of purely visual information or upon which the presentation of purely visual information isn't possible and/or practicable. i still don't think that it was a coincidence that -- at the time the original "official" V-Chip site was constructed -- those were the only 2 commercial broadcast networks in the U.S. which provided at least a modicum of described audio programming -- at least when the program being described is broadcast (that is, not in syndication, but only when it is broadcast "in season"). Fox, for example, in co-operation with WGBH Boston's pioneering (at least in the U.S.) DVS division, provides audio description for one of the few television shows i actually "watch", The Simpsons. however, this applies only to the broadcast version of The Simpsons; as soon as the show enters syndication, activating one's SAP yields nothing but the audio track for the Spanish-language version of the episode.

Which returns me to the nub of my original gist, why isn't there a D-Chip on every TV that allows for the immediate activation of a dedicated audio description stream?

return to the text that follows Note 1

Note 2:

The illustrious United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is the same august body from which sitting Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and (current Chief Justice) John Roberts were drawn, and on whose bench once sat Robert Bork (who resigned from the court in 1988) and Kenneth Starr, who -- before investigating the sexual (and other) pecadillos of William Jefferson Cllinton -- resigned his seat in 1989 to become Ronald Reagan's Solicitor General. In the interest of historical accuracy, it should be noted that of those judges listed as sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in the recent past, only current Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, occupied a seat on the appellate bench at the time that the court invalidated the FCC's baseline rules for the provision of video description for most mainstream programming.

return to the text that follows Note 2

Resources & References

• Who's Watching? A Profile of the Blind and Visually Impaired Audience for Television and Video (an AFB Chartbook, by Jaclyn Packer & Corinne Kirchner)
• Remarks to FCC at En Banc Hearing on Public Interest Obligations of Television Broadcasters
• Audio Described Programs Airing This Month in the U.S. (from tv-now.com)

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Created February 14, 2006
Last updated April 11, 2006