ALERT!--1 Email from You Can Keep the FCC from Throwing Accessible Gaming Tech
Under the Bus!Subject: ALERT!--1 Email from You Can Keep the FCC from Throwing
Accessible Gaming Tech Under the Bus!
ALERT!--An Email Today'll Keep the Waiver Away!
Tell the FCC to Say NO
to Inaccessible Gaming and Communications Technologies!
For further information, contact:
Mark Richert, Esq.
Director, Public Policy, AFB
(202) 469-6833
[email protected]
Some time ago, lobbyists representing the highly lucretive gaming technology
industry filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
seeking a formal waiver from any requirement stemming from the landmark
Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) ensuring
that key communications features, such as text chat and other forms of
electronic messaging included with their gaming technologies, will be
accessible. While the CVAA does permit the FCC to grant waivers in those
instances where specific technologies may be both designed and marketed for
primary purposes other than the kinds of communication contemplated in the new
law, the FCC is nevertheless completely within its authority to refuse to grant
waivers for such technologies.
There are signs that the FCC may be generally sympathetic to the interest of
people with disabilities in accessible gaming technologies that incorporate
various kinds of communication. However, it has recently come to our attention
that the FCC may be under the impression that people with vision loss
themselves are not particularly interested in the accessibility of gaming
technologies. Advocates should set them straight.
Send a brief email today to Karen Peltz Strauss, Deputy Bureau Chief, Consumer
and Governmental Affairs Bureau, FCC at
[email protected]
In your short, polite but firm message, tell the FCC how you feel about the
ability of people who are blind or visually impaired to fully use the most
popular gaming technologies on the market today. Remind the FCC that the
growing popularity of gaming technologies in K-12 education to foster learning,
use of gaming technologies to increase movement and exercise, and the overall
impact of gaming technologies to bring people together, means that the
accessibility of such technologies must not be thrown under the bus. Indeed, if
the communications features of such technologies are allowed to continue to be
inaccessible, kids, adults and seniors with vision loss will continue to be
shut out of full participation in school and community and will not be able to
enjoy the full benefits afforded by such technologies.
Astoundingly, the industry representatives arguing for the waiver say that a
waiver of the accessibility requirements of the new law is necessary to allow
industry maximum opportunity to innovate and thereby build on their alleged
track record of success meeting the access needs of people with disabilities.
Tell the FCC what you think of the kind of technological innovation that
routinely leaves people with vision loss behind; we're left behind while
industry brags about their access accomplishments at the same time they seek
legal maneuvers, like the proposed waiver, to shirk their responsibilities.
The FCC is expected to act very soon on the proposed waiver, so send your
message to the FCC today!
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