Legal Compliance
3Play Media’s closed captions and transcripts comply with federal accessibility laws and international standards for web accessibility. We guarantee that our closed captions provide equal access to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing by providing a measured accuracy rate of 99.6%, time synchronizing our caption files word for word, providing caption placement so as not to obscure relevant visual information, and using certified, professional editors with discipline-specific expertise. This allows us to guarantee over 99% accuracy, even in cases of poor audio quality, multiple speakers, difficult content, and accents.
QUIZ: What Captioning Laws Apply to You?
Take this quick quiz to see which laws may require you to add captions to video.
FCC Compliance
Our closed captions comply with the quality standards established by the FCC for accuracy, synchronicity, completeness, and placement as set forth in the FCC’s rules at 47 C.F.R. § 79.1(j)(2).
We also comply with the best practices set forth in the FCC’s rule 79.1(k)(4) for offline captioning.
Our Spanish captioning services and Video Clip Captioning tool are available for you to comply with the FCC’s Spanish language and video clip closed captioning regulations.
CVAA Compliance
3Play Media complies with the requirements for closed captioning of online video that previously appeared on television, as set forth by Title 2 of the CVAA (21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act) for Video Programming.
ADA Compliance
Our closed captions comply with the ADA Title III requirements set forth at 42 U.S.C. 12103(1)(A)-(B), 42 U.S.C. 12181(7), 42 U.S.C. 12182(a) and Title II requirements set forth at 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101-12213 for providing equal opportunities to individuals with disabilities.
Section 508 and 504 Compliance
Our closed captions comply with the standards established in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act 29 U.S.C. § 794d and § 1194.24 and with the Information and Communication Technology Final Standards and Guidelines included in the Section 508 ICT Refresh set forth at 36 C.F.R. Parts 1193 and 1194.
Our closed captions also comply with the standards established in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act 29 U.S.C. § 794, which guarantees equal access to individuals with disabilities as a civil right.
WCAG 2.1 Compliance
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, the international standard for web accessibility, lays out best practices, techniques, and standards for closed captioning in Success Criterion 1.2.2. Our captions and transcripts comply with the standards and techniques set forth in WCAG 2.1 and 2.0 Success Criterion 1.2.2. WCAG 2.0 standards are included in the Section 508 ICT refresh, which was published in the Federal Register on January 18, 2017.
Recent Lawsuits & Captioning Compliance
Although Section 504 and the ADA do not currently reference closed captioning requirements, several recent lawsuits & investigations by the Office for Civil Rights and Department of Justice have extended captioning requirements to both Section 504 and the ADA.
Harvard and MIT were sued by the National Association of the Deaf under the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act for failing to provide closed captioning (or for providing unintelligible captions) on their online course materials. The consent decree defines 3Play Media as the standard for caption quality: “In the case of video files, to overlay or externally embed synchronized visual text for speech and, consistent with WCAG 2.1 AA, provide nondialogue audio information needed to understand the program content, including sound effects, music, laughter, speaker identification, and location on a digital media file at an accuracy rate equal to that offered by a vendor captioning service such as 3PlayMedia and in a manner consistent with industry standards regarding synchronicity, completeness, and proper placement.”
Netflix was sued by the National Association of the Deaf under the ADA for failing to provide closed captioning on most of their “watch instantly” videos.
The Resolution Agreement between the Office for Civil Rights and University of Phoenix lays forth terms as defined in the Section 504 regulation, 34 C.F.R. § 104.3. This agreement references benchmarks set by W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA, which includes captioning for post-produced online video.