Nine U.S. Senators and 17 Representatives from the U.S. House of Representatives co-signed a letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel regarding the translation of Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) into languages other than English and Spanish. In addition to requesting information about efforts to translate the alerts into new languages, the letter asks about challenges currently preventing the achievement of this goal.
Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) are short, emergency messages from authorized federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial public alerting authorities that are broadcast from cell towers to WEA‐enabled mobile devices in locally targeted areas. Wireless providers primarily use cell broadcast technology for WEA message delivery. WEA broadcasts, which involve partnerships between FEMA, the FCC, and wireless providers, include AMBER alerts, information about inclement weather events, stay-at-home orders, and other emergencies.
The letter observes that many Asian American populations have low English proficiency rates, with some populations reporting that more than a third of their members have difficulty communicating in English with healthcare providers. In addition, two thirds of Asian Americans speak a language other than English at home. When disasters occur, members of these populations can have difficulties reading and interpreting emergency alerts, putting them at risk of injury and death from disaster impacts. Several recent FCC orders have discussed the need for improvement of language translation for the WEA system, but efforts remain ongoing.
“Asian Americans are expected to be ‘the nation’s largest immigrant group by the middle of the century’, and the linguistic barriers faced by this community demonstrate a need for accessible emergency notifications so that non-English and non-Spanish speaking communities can be prepared for extreme weather events,” the letter explains. “With a rise in non-English and non-Spanish speakers, we urge the FCC to examine mandating languages other than English and Spanish in WEAs.”
Read the letter at: https://bit.ly/3juL3sA