How can people with disabilities prepare?

People with disabilities may be disproportionately affected by the transition. Selecting a converter box with the necessary features, such as closed captioning and video description, is especially important for these viewers.

Closed Captioning

Every converter box manufacturer certified to participate in the government's coupon program is required to provide closed captioning for display on your television set, but the features vary by box. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has produced a guide that lists different types of closed captioning capabilities for dozens of coupon-eligible converter boxes: decoding of basic and advanced captions, whether the remote control has a caption button and whether caption settings are retained when a box is shut off. The guide is updated periodically as new converter boxes become available. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has also produced an informational flyer about closed captioning options for consumers.

Video Descriptions

With analog television, some broadcasters provided video descriptions for vision-impaired consumers, with voice-overs describing movements on the screen, using the secondary audio program channel, or SAP.

Digital television allows multiple audio channels to be transmitted simultaneously, but broadcasters have not yet agreed on a standard method for carrying video description. However, some coupon-eligible converter boxes are capable of processing additional audio services, which may be used for video description. . The FCC has produced a guide that lists coupon-eligible boxes with the SAP feature, noting which ones contain remote controls that have a button for easy access to the SAP feature. The guide can be found here: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/converterboxfeatures.html.