Airline Safety Information and Entertainment Access Act

Airline Safety Information and Entertainment Access Act

This bill requires air carriers (including foreign carriers) to ensure equal access to airline information and entertainment programming for all airline passengers regardless of their disabilities.

Specifically, the bill requires an air carrier to provide or make available for persons with disabilities

• open captioning and an American Sign Language (ASL) option when the information and programming are available to passengers through shared video displays,
• closed captioning and an ASL option when the information and programming are available to passengers through individual video displays, and
• audio descriptions when the information and programming are available to passengers through individual or shared video displays.

An air carrier must also provide any aural public address announcement in textual format through individual or shared video displays.

Further, an air carrier must ensure all control systems for video displays, applications (apps) for personal devices, web portals, and websites for passengers have the option to allow a person with a disability to operate the item nonvisually.

The Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (the Access Board) must set forth the minimum technical criteria for individual video displays, apps for personal devices, web portals, and websites for airline passengers to ensure that they include a mechanism that allows persons with disabilities to operate them nonvisually. The Department of Transportation must issue any necessary regulations.

A civil action may be brought by an aggrieved person or the Department of Justice in a U.S. District Court against an air carrier for violations of these requirements.