Closed Captioning and Video Description of Video Programming

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) determines that the four factors contained in section 713(e) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (Act) will continue to apply when evaluating individual requests for closed captioning exemptions under section 713(d)(3) and our corresponding rules, notwithstanding a change in terminology in the statute, enacted by the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA), which replaced the term "undue burden" in that section with the term "economically burdensome." The Order further amends the Commission's rules to replace all current references to "undue burden" with the term "economically burdensome." These rule amendments correspond with the new statutory language in the CVAA requiring petitioners seeking individual closed captioning exemptions under section 713(d)(3) of the Act to show that providing captions on their programming would be economically burdensome.