Section 68.5, Waivers (Application for Waiver of Hearing Aid Compatibility Requirements)

Section 710(b) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the Act), requires that almost all telephones manufactured in, or imported into, this country must be hearing aid compatible. Congress recognized, however, that there may be technological or economic reasons why some new telephones may not meet the hearing aid compatibility (HAC) requirement. Therefore, Congress provided a waiver request procedure. Section 68.5 of the Commission’s rules, 47 CFR § 68.5, provides the criteria to be used to assess waiver requests. The Commission submits this revised information collection to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to modify the existing information collection requirements under OMB Control Number 3060-0422 relating to the Commission’s hearing aid compatibility (HAC) requirements. In this supporting statement, the Commission adds wireline advanced communications services (ACS) telephonic customer premises equipment (CPE) that are subject to the waiver provisions of section 68.5 of the Commission’s rules to existing burdens for wireline telephones connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) that were included in the February 2016 Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) submission, OMB Control Number 3060-0422.

The latest form for Section 68.5, Waivers (Application for Waiver of Hearing Aid Compatibility Requirements) expires 2022-04-30 and can be found here.