A: The Federal Communications Commission established rules for TV closed captioning to ensure that viewers who are deaf and hard of hearing have full access to programming and to provide guidance to video programming distributors and programmers. The rules apply to all television programming with captions, and require that captions be:
Accurate – Captions must match the spoken words in the dialogue and convey background noises and other sounds to the fullest extent possible.
Synchronous – Captions must coincide with their corresponding spoken words and sounds to the greatest extent possible, and must be displayed on the screen at a speed that can be read by viewers.
Complete – Captions must run from the beginning to the end of the program to the fullest extent possible.
Properly placed – Captions should not block other important visual content on the screen, overlap one another or run off the edge of the video screen.
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