DOT hears criticism of rights plan for deaf flyers (07/25/2006) By Andrew Compart, Travel Weekly, 07/25/2006 A multiyear effort at the Transportation Department to create a consensus on rights for deaf and hearing-impaired air travelers is coming apart, with airlines blasting a DOT proposal supported by the community's advocates. The criticism concerns a DOT notice of proposed rulemaking in February to create numerous requirements for airlines, including giving deaf and hearing-impaired travelers "prompt" access to the same information provided to other passengers. Among other things, that would mean providing captioning on televisions and other audiovisual systems on airline-owned, -leased or -controlled property at U.S. airports and providing captioning for in-flight safety, informational and entertainment content on new aircraft. The proposed rules also would require airlines to train employees to communicate with hearing-impaired individuals. The rules would apply not only to U.S. carriers but also foreign carriers for flights that land or take off from a U.S. airport. Advocates for the hearing-impaired were thrilled with most of the proposals. "Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals have been excluded from air travel services and information for too many years," Kelby Brick, director of law and advocacy for the National Association of the Deaf, said when the DOT issued its proposal. But in comments filed with the DOT last month, the Airline Transport Association accused the DOT of overstepping its bounds in the proposal. It said the Air Carrier Access Act requires only that airlines provide nondiscriminatory access to air travel, not to every aspect of air travel. "The DOT has conflated civil rights with customer service matters that it should leave to the competitive marketplace to address," the ATA said. The ATA also argued that the proposal "involves significant costs that impose an undue burden on airlines." Both the ATA and the Regional Airline Association claimed that the DOT underestimated the costs and overestimated the benefits. The National Air Carrier Association expressed the same concerns. Foreign airlines also almost unanimously opposed the proposal, arguing that the U.S. did not have the authority to apply the rules to their flights and that the requirements could put them in conflict with disabled traveler rules in their home countries. That's the same argument those carriers made about a DOT proposal, still under consideration, to expand existing disabled-traveler rules for U.S. airlines to foreign airline flights that use U.S. airports. The DOT issued that notice of proposed rulemaking in November 2004, in response to an amendment to the ACAA that prohibits foreign air carrier discrimination against disabled travelers. Groups representing the hearing-impaired have been pushing for air travel rules for more than a decade. They moved closer to their goal in August 2002 when the DOT asked the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency, to submit a proposal to improve air travel access for deaf, hearing-impaired and deaf-blind travelers. The NCD quickly assembled a working group that included representatives of hearing-impaired communities, airports and airlines. But the airlines were never persuaded that government regulation was the way to improve the services. Those objections were made even more clear when the airlines filed their comments to the DOT last month. The ATA emphasized that the DOT "should not consider our active participation in the work group as an endorsement of the petition."