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NPR Labs At CES 2011: Moving Radio Captioning Forward
Federal
law mandates that television broadcasts accommodate deaf and hard of
hearing consumers with the captioning of shows. Why not radio?
That's a question we have been exploring (and struggling with) at NPR Labs. At CES 2011 in Las Vegas in January, we hosted our annual Radio with Vision Showcase.
The ever-spreading digital revolution has made it possible to deliver
radio broadcasts concurrently with a text feed of the audio. It is
important to NPR that we take steps to be inclusive, making radio
something that can be shared between deaf individuals and the hearing
world around them.
We took a big step toward this goal during our 2008 election-night
coverage when we successfully distributed captioned-radio programming to
a national audience for the first time.
We think an open-source approach to radio captioning could spark the
beginning of a global movement to bring radio to millions of people who
lack hearing. (Our proposal for a global captioned standard for radio transmissions is nearing adoption at the ITU).
At the Showcase this year, we heard from NPR Labs’ Rich Rarey, Ellyn
Sheffield and WireReady CEO David Gerstmann about the close out of our
Personalized Audio Information Service (PAIS) project. DICE
Electronics’ Chris Cook talked about the future of accessibly radio
interface, and gave an update on the successes and challenges of
launching their first talking radio, the ITR-100a. Jake Sigal, CEO of
Livio Radio, showed everyone the common threads between accessible
broadcast electronics and mainstream products, an important relationship
that will help bring accessibility to market and make it a reality,
while Joe D’Angelo of iBiquity Digital gave updates on HD Radio®
upgrades and development that will aid in achieving an accessible radio
experience. After lunch, Anindya “Bapin” Bhattacharyya, Technology
Chief at the Hellen Keller National center and Mike May, CEO of the
Sendero Group, both gave passionate talks underlining the importance of
accessible broadcasting in personal as well as national terms. The day
wrapped up after NPR Labs’ Sam Goldman walked app developers through
plans for captioning software to run on mobile devices such as Tablet
computers and Chumby devices.
We plan to establish working relationships with developers for iOS,
Android and web apps, in addition to any other appropriate platforms.
We are looking forward to an enthusiastic discussion at CES to kick off
this new stage of our Accessible Radio initiative.
Transcripts of our conversation at the 2011 CES are available.
- Click here to view the transcript from our morning discussion.
- Click here to view the transcript from our afternoon discussion.
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