Consumer Electronics Safety Standard Development: A UL Perspective [Standards Corner]

This is the second article in a series intended to demystify the inner workings of Underwriters Laboratories (UL) product safety standards, particularly as they apply to audio and video equipment. The first article, published in the “Standards Corner” column in the July issue of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine examined the UL product safety standard development process. In this second article, the evolution/development of our audio/video equipment standards is explored in greater detail, including some of the challenges faced by standard developers, as well as the development of a new hazard-based standard will be seen to mitigate many of the identified challenges associated with traditional standard development.