[EAS] Text To Speech issues

[Dave Turnmire]

On 4/12/2013 1:09 PM, Gary Timm wrote:
> Dave,
> You are correct that when the ECIG I.G. was drafted, the ECIG members had hopes that the EAS Header Code derived info at the beginning of the converted text would go away, and thus provided for the eventuality of that happening in the I.G.  But the FCC did not change that rule, as you correctly quoted.
>   
> On your other point, unfortunately FEMA did not accept the concept of EASText outlined in the ECIG I.G., so that cannot be used unless FEMA changes its mind on that issue.
>   
>
Yeah, someone else pointed out the above to me offline.  If I'm 
understanding FEMA's position (stated in their 2010 concurrence letters) 
accurately, they were concerned with deviating from the CAP standard 
(which apparently doesn't include the EAStext parameter) and didn't want 
to alter the IPAWS profile... perhaps because that would have introduced 
more delays.  Both of those issues would seem to have some merit at that 
point in time.  But that introduces the possibility that they'd be open 
to changes in the future.

So... the question in my mind is whether the EAStext idea is something 
that we as an industry should be advocating.  And whether we should be 
advocating the elimination or significant relaxing of 11.51(d).  The 
latter would seem to be an FCC issue.  Whether the EAStext issue is best 
addressed as part of a CAP standard issue, I don't know.  If this issue 
is fairly specific to the EAS implementation of CAP, then perhaps this 
really boils down to getting the FCC to revise or drop 11.51(d)... and 
then work on revising the IPAWS profile (which I presume involves FEMA).

It seems to me that regardless of the EAStext issue, it would be 
worthwhile to re-evaluate the validity of 11.51(d), since that also 
impacts the content of audio files generated by emergency management and 
forwarded by broadcasters.

Dave