Jared Evans Global Microbrand

Thanks to efforts of National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT), Edward Markey’s (D-MA) “21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2008″ (H.R. 6320) has been introduced.

As the Internet evolves with the meteroic rise of video clips on the Internet, it often has been a slap in the face and a step backward for Deaf people browsing the websites of commercial enterprises that caption these very same video clips but only if they are on a televeision broadcast. There are no technical barriers to transfer the captions over to the web, yet none of corporations have made any headway in this direction towards more accessiblity.

It’s gruntingly apparent by now that the only way to compel commercial enterprises to take action in this area of online accessibility would be to implement new legislation to mandate the captioning for the online video clips. This legislation will stand a better chance of getting passed if many of us make noise together to our congressional representatives. NAD tells us how to do this in one of their posts.

Do your part today to help get this legislation passed!

Ars Technica has an excellent article about this legislation.