Originally Posted by Liza

I could not find the thread that had this topic. Please feel free to move this whenever appripiate.

For those of you who are worrying about closed captioning funds being limited by the government to educational programs this fall...... don't panic! I asked before jumping into conclusions, thankfully. Why are some people scaring others based on lack of research? Grrr....

In an email response from the project officer for CC to my personal inquiries:

"Congress has already addressed the need to expand media access for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing in non-classroom settings. The Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 requires all new television sets to contain a decoder chip that is capable of displaying closed captioned television transmissions. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (along with a 1997 FCC rulemaking) also contains extensive requirements for the provision of closed captioning, mandating that most television programming be closed captioned by 2006, and requiring captioning of gradually increasing percentages of programming before that date. Given this legislation, most programs no longer captioned with IDEA funds will continue to be accessible through the efforts of the private sector which would include program providers and the broadcast or cable networks."

Of course, I thanked her for her helpful email.