New Comcast service boosts TV for the blind
By Hiawatha Bray
| GLOBE
STAFF NOVEMBER 12, 2014
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L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF
Comcast’s Josh Chace assisted
Perkins student Cullen Gallagher (left) and Kim Charlson, library
director.
Kim Charlson is blind, but she loves
television. Her favorite show is “NCIS,” the naval crime series. And thanks to
new technology from Comcast Corp., it will soon be a lot easier for Charlson and
other blind fans to tune in.
The cable television provider’s X1 digital
service will soon feature a “talking guide” that will read out channel listings
and program descriptions in a lifelike electronic voice. Blind users who “view”
TV programs by listening to them will now find it easier to change channels,
track down their favorite programs, and program their digital video recorders to
copy shows.
On Tuesday, Charlson demonstrated the new
talking guide at the Perkins School for the
Blind in Watertown, where she works as library director. She said the
talking guide lets her channel-surf like any sighted
person.
“I always wondered why they would say there’s
200 channels and I can’t find a thing to watch. That’s how I always felt,”
Charlson said. “At least now I can identify what’s on all those
channels.”
The talking guides will become available to
all X1 subscribers nationwide over the next few weeks.
Users won’t have to get new equipment; the
system runs automatically over Comcast’s data network.
“It’s cloud-based, so we didn’t have to worry
about installing additional hardware or software in a box,” said Tom Wlodkowski,
Comcast’s vice president of accessibility. He is also a veteran of
the National Center for Accessible
Media at the public television station WGBH in
Boston.
Cullen Gallagher, a 16-year-old from Quincy
who’s an 11th-grader at Perkins, isn’t a big TV fan. But the new talking guide
could change that, he said.
“I want to see what’s out there on the TV
networks,” Gallagher said. “I’m just going to play around and look at the menus.
I’m a geek. I like to play with technology.”
Comcast said the talking guide is the first
offered by any cable company in the United States. It was developed in response
to the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, a federal law
enacted in 2010. The legislation requires cable companies to start offering
audible menus to make onscreen commands usable by people who have vision
problems.
The talking menu system works in conjunction
with another federally mandated service, descriptive video. This is a service in
which a voice describes on-screen action during a TV show, saying things like,
“Jack Bauer draws his gun.” The nation’s nine most popular broadcast and cable
channels must offer these descriptive services on at least four hours of
programming every week.
The combination of descriptive video and
spoken channel guides will make TV a more immersive experience for about 8
million Americans with vision disabilities.
“TV is more than just a box with a picture in
it,” Charlson said. “It’s our culture and our society, and people spend a lot of
time talking to each other about what they watched on TV last night. It’s
important to be a part of that conversation.”
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