Making Marconi Proud, One Taxpayers’ Grant At A Time
October 12, 2006 at 11:57 am
We try not to be too heartless here at Extreme Mortman, but when we saw this item on Mediabistro’s Fishbowl DC …
NPR RECEIVES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION GRANT TO DEVELOP ACCESSIBLE RADIO TECHNOLOGY FOR DEAF, HARD OF HEARING, BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED COMMUNITIES
… we had to pause and say, sure, the deaf and hard-of-hearing could probably benefit from new technology to make radio accessible — but the BLIND?
Greg L said,
October 12, 2006 @ 12:23 pm
What the heck are we doing spending education dollars at NPR? Are we going to have a radio that signs using ASL or something? With little hands that pop out?
I’m the parent of a hearing impaired child, and while I appreciate the intent, this is a tremendous waste of money. How about using education dollars for something novel — like EDUCATING CHILDREN!
Tom Clay said,
October 12, 2006 @ 1:52 pm
Brought to you by the same people who required banks to put braille on the buttons of drive up ATMs.
By the way, Nikoli Tesla was the inventor of the radio, not Marconi.
Kevin Murphy said,
October 12, 2006 @ 1:53 pm
There are ways to use portions of the FM radio spectrum, either with newer digital methods, or older analog methods (e.g. subcarriers), outside of the normal stereo band to provide services for small markets, such as these, or ethnic languages and other niches. Microsoft, for one, operates an extensive data network using FM subcarriers for low cost, low-speed data broadcasting.
Currently there are some services for the blind on radio that are quite useful. Audio books and other reading services, for example. These are normally on analog subcarriers and it may be intended to support their move to newer digital channels.
Services for the deaf might well include tramsitting data, such as news or sports, which can be displayed on a special terminal or PC.
In short, it’s not as silly as you seem to think, other than the general silliness of needing agovernment subsidy for everything. But that boat sailed a long time ago.
triticale said,
October 12, 2006 @ 1:54 pm
Braille is not inappropriate on walk-up ATMs. Producing a non-braille version would be an additional cost.
Mike Rentner said,
October 12, 2006 @ 1:56 pm
I’m not familiar with this program, and I have no love for NPR, but it’s a very reasonable technology goal to have a sort of closed captioned device for a radio, especially using a sort of voice recognition technology.
I haven’t found voice recognition programs to be very reliable in every instance, but I believe the it will continue to improve. At such time the deaf will benefit greatly from it. Perhaps this is a way of encouraging that development.
Ronnie Schreiber said,
October 12, 2006 @ 2:17 pm
Recently, when the Muslim cab drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport refused to accept fares from people with alcohol or guide dogs, the airport commission wanted to implement a plan (now rejected because of negative feedback from the public) that would have different colored roof lights for cabs so customers and the cab callers could find cabbies who would take them. While talking to the folks at Leader Dogs For The Blind about this, it occured to me that different colored roof lights would be useless for folks with guide dogs. You couldn’t even train the dog for this, since dog’s have very limited color vision.
Jason Coleman said,
October 12, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
I can certainly see the value here, but I agree that this might be the wrong place for Education funds to be going. I’d have to see more of the grant’s goals and priorities to make a full decision.
However, this reminds me of something that happened in Vail/Avon Colorado. The city councils decided they wanted all signage in their buildings to include braille. Not bad, actually pretty responsible.
A short while later, they were dealing with kids defacing signage and another “directive” came down: To cover all the signage with clear plexiglass sheets so that grafitti could be more easily removed without damaging the signage.
The problem was, the clear plexiglass covered up the braille. Everyone got a great laugh out of that, to my knowledge the signs are still covered with the plexi. The city councils just gave up.
Let’s hope that this round of “improving accessibility” doesn’t go the same way.
–Jason
ray said,
October 12, 2006 @ 3:07 pm
I think Kevin missed the point, as did Mike. No one’s laughing about providing some kind of accessibility to people who can’t hear radio. But I do believe it is quite silly (and quite funny) to have people providing “accessibility” to blind folks who can hear current radio perfectly well. It’s like when we get into providing audio to blind/visually impaired folks who can’t read the material we’re providing. Invariably, some yahoo in management goes, Yes, but how will the deaf people read it?
MHAithaca said,
October 12, 2006 @ 3:15 pm
A couple of accessibility issues come to mind regarding radio for blind listeners. One is as suggested above, availability of audio content based on text material. Local newspapers read on the radio, for example.
Another would be non-visual ways of tuning a radio. A blind user can find the on-off switch and the volume knob, but how does this user tune to a particular station? Audio feedback when you’re tuning, such as a voice that announces “93.5, 93.7, 93.9″ as you scan, could help enormously. If you could also leverage the digital info that’s now broadcast by some standard analog radio stations, the radio could tell the user they’ve just tuned to “WXYZ, Light Rock.”
Charlie said,
October 12, 2006 @ 3:16 pm
They haven’t thought this through. I can’t imagine NPR wanting to make Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity, et.al. accessable to anyone. Or are they only doing it for NPR affiliates (and the money) ?
Sharon Secor said,
October 12, 2006 @ 4:35 pm
As I wrote in a piece for Blogger News Network today, http://www.bloggernews.net/1536, “I’m not quite sure that is something that the Department of Education should be passing out tax-payer money for, particularly when the primary goal, or what would seem to be the primary goal to us less bureaucratically minded common folk — that of educating children effectively — has yet to be met.”
We’re falling drastically behind the world in math and science, and figuring out the price per ounce of food is lumped in among complex tasks “more than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform.” Other tasks that were considered complex by the researchers of this study included the ability to ““interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.”
Employers throughout the nation are lamenting the fact that students are not arriving to the workforce properly prepared. It seems to me that the Department of Education should focus on achieving the effective education of the nation’s youth before passing out grants to NPR and others for programs that, while nice, are not as essential as mastering reading, writing, math and science. And, that goes for children facing hearing and sight challenges as well. They, too, will be better served in their lives by a solid education.
Best Regards,
Sharon Secor
Haywood Yathinkaboutit said,
October 12, 2006 @ 4:41 pm
I know everyone’s first impulse is to develop an opinion right away. We do live in a society that trends towards instand gratification and such.
Stop and think for a minute. Could deaf people have a way to “read the radio” the same way Closed captions help deaf people “listen” to the TV…..Not if you listened to some of the visionaries who shared their “well thought out” opinion.
An yes the Public Radio is very helpful for the blind. Many public radio stations offer additional special services to the blind community. But don’t take my word for it, here is a quote from the
Detroit Radio Information Service, that is a part of my local public radio station WDET FM:
Quoted from http://www.wdetfm.org/dris/
The Detroit Radio Information Service–a radio-reading service for people with disabilities–is a special audience service of WDET-FM at Wayne State University. DRIS embraces and enhances WDET’s public radio mission to expand knowledge, educate, inform and culturally enlighten.
“You have a wonderful program to help the print-impaired, who are very much interested in staying alive intellectually”…”What a joy to have your service!”
Since 1978, DRIS has filled an information void in the blind and print-impaired population by offering a simple, cost-effective method of accessing printed news and information published in hundreds of daily, weekly and monthly periodicals.
Being uninformed is a serious handicap that hinders one’s ability to make common everyday decisions. DRIS staff and volunteers are dedicated to providing timely printed matter and consumer information to the blind, physically disabled, and cognitively disabled residents of southeastern Michigan and to providing quality programs designed to help those individuals lead enriched, productive and independent lives.
DRIS is the only service of its kind in the region providing free reading services to one of the community’s most under-served population groups. The programming helps listeners by providing equal access to dated information, alleviating isolation and providing a vital social connection.
How Does it Work?
Like many radio-reading services, DRIS broadcasts its programming over a private, closed-circuit radio signal (WDET-FM’s 67 kHz sub-channel). Specially built radio receivers are loaned free of charge to qualified applicants. This is particularly important to elderly and/or homebound listeners on low fixed incomes. DRIS is also used in retirement facilities, schools, hospitals, low vision clinics, senior centers and nursing homes. More than 2,000 individuals and institutional sites currently use DRIS receivers. DRIS is also available on community cable channels and is streamed over the Internet in several formats.
That doesn’t sound silly to me. Instead it seems right in line with Public Radio’s mission. And for the sake of disclosure, I do love Public Radio I have even, donated money, and gasp, have even volunteered
Jim C. said,
October 12, 2006 @ 5:03 pm
Tom Clay said, “Brought to you by the same people who required banks to put braille on the buttons of drive up ATMs.”
For blind folks who are being driven there by someone else.
Kevin Murphy said,
October 12, 2006 @ 10:21 pm
Ray–
No, I didn’t miss the point. Sure, accessibility OF radio for the blind would be silly, but accessibility USING radio would not be.
You assume that commercial broadcast radio serves all blind folks needs, but it doesn’t. Or do you know of a regular radio station that plays audio books? That’s a standard thing that is sent over FM subcarrier using sidebands available on each station, given you have the special subcarrier receiver. Other stations use these channels for data or niche foreign languages, which can be used for other accessibility needs.
Problem is that radio stations are going to new formats, such as hi-def radio, which will require different techniques for sending this auxillary data. Now, I don’t KNOW that this is what the press release is talking about, but it, or some other special service quite likely is.
Now, if you want to argue that this is a silly waste of public funds, well maybe. But it’s surely nowhere near the worst waste. In a country that spends billions on tomato museums and helium reserves, this actually does some good, so I wouldn’t be too hard on it.
Kevin Murphy said,
October 12, 2006 @ 10:23 pm
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_reading_service