i3 | January 27, 2023

Market-Shaping Standards

From TV to health tools, CTA standards drive innovation.

Closed captioning and sleep tracking, heart-rate monitoring and residential smart energy, are each more efficient and reliable because CTA helped guide their design. Since 1924, CTA best practices have served as the gold standard, steering production of many of the products consumers around the world use every day. Standards and best practices have shaped the tech industry as we know it, making consumer experiences safer and more user friendly. CTA is an ANSI-accredited standards developer with more than 1,200 active participants, more than 70 committees and working groups, and a library of more than 135 standards.

Powering Each Day

Consumers may not give it much thought, but standards played an enormous role in developing the apps and devices that reliably power their daily lives. Here are some examples:

Sleep solutions

More consumers use digital health solutions to track and monitor their sleep. Under the auspices of CTA’s Health, Fitness and Wellness Committee, the Sleep Monitoring Working Group has developed a series of standards that define terminology, methodology for measurements and performance requirements for sleep monitoring solutions.

Television

TV tech is a wildly dynamic field. Whether streaming the newest drama or watching sports in 4K, consumers benefit from CTA standards that guide and power this essential technology. Look no further than closed captioning, which historically improved accessibility of TV programming. Today, millennials and Gen Z, especially, love captions, which facilitate mobile device viewing and open up content produced in viewers’ non-native languages. CTA standards further support TVs through interoperability, streaming and next-generation TV standards.

Smart energy

As consumers increase their awareness of how technology uses energy in their homes, they also demand more smart energy and higher efficiency technology solutions. CTA standards have zeroed in on effective measurement of energy consumption for a number of key consumer home technologies, including digital assistants, TVs, water heaters and more.   

Thanks to invaluable assistance from committee participants, CTA most recently helped open the door to affordable hearing aids.

Digital health and accessibility

Demand for digital health technologies dramatically accelerated during the pandemic. Consumers embraced home health monitoring and connecting with their clinicians via telehealth applications. With more than 20 standards in digital health, from cardiovascular technologies to digital therapeutics and artificial intelligence in health care, as well as mental health technologies, CTA’s universal guidelines inform app development and improve accessibility at airports, convention centers, museums, public transportation and more.   

Standards Never Sleep

CTA standards will continue to guide market-shaping decisions and drive innovation through standardization. Members and standards program participants shape and identify future standardization topics and technical content. Thanks to invaluable assistance from committee participants, CTA most recently helped open the door to affordable hearing aids. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids marked the culmination of many years of advocacy by CTA, member companies and allied organizations. Americans with mild to moderate hearing loss can now buy more affordable hearing aids in the same way they purchase reading glasses, without a medical exam.

CTA offers more opportunities for members to contribute during spring and fall Technology and Standards Forums, which attract large and engaged audiences. See how you can lend your expertise to this important work.