St. Paul, MN – On Monday, August 1, a number of bills passed by the Legislature became law. Among the new laws is legislation chief authored by Rep. Brian Daniels, R-Faribault.
SF 2603 requires licensed health care facilities to have the closed captioning feature activated on any television in a waiting room provided for patients or the general public. It also requires health care facility staff to make “reasonable efforts” to prevent members of the public or patients from deactivating the captioning feature on waiting room televisions, and to reactivate it as soon as possible if it is deactivated.
“Far too often, televisions in public places do not have the closed caption feature activated,” said Daniels. “Minnesotans that are deaf or hard of hearing rely on closed captioning in order to follow television programming. I was proud to author this bill which is another step forward for our deaf community.”
The bill passed in both the Senate and House with unanimous support.
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