A new bill before Congress would add some new features to the Americans With Disabilities Act, to insure that all Americans have equal access to TV and the Internet. But the one feature that stands out is providing close captioning for Internet videos. The bill would mandate that the FCC have in place guidelines for close captioning 18 months after the bill is passed. The articles goes on to state:

Three kinds of video would be affected by the law: preproduced material
that has already been captioned for TV viewing, live programming, and
video that is “generally considered to be comparable to programming
provided by multichannel programming distributors.” The legislation
also includes a waiver provision. The FCC could grant waivers to
companies that petition “showing that the requirements contained in
this section would result in an undue burden.”

Markey’s bill also requires manufacturers to boost the accessibility of
remote video devices for people with disabilities. In particular,
future apps that project menus on TV screens will have to include audio
input, “so that such menus or indicators are accessible to and usable
by individuals who are blind or visually impaired.” Remotes will also
have to include a specific button that accesses closed
captioning—rather than, as often happens now, bury the function in an
options menu. Whenever “closed captioning” or “video description”
functions do appear in menus, they must appear on the top tier of the
menu list.

There is sufficient support in Congress to indicate that this bill should pass, hopefully intact.

Source.