Access to Locally Televised On-Screen Information
Detailed Overview

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Local television broadcasts serve as the primary source of information about emergency alerts, weather warnings, local traffic problems, and school closings in every community across the nation. These alerts are supposed to be presented in accessible formats for people with visual or hearing impairments, according to FFC requirements. Despite continual complaints to the FCC by consumers, however, noncompliance with these requirements is the norm through the industry. Yet most local newscasters are interested in serving the needs of all the constituents in their communities, and are themselves frustrated by lack of attention to this urgent need within current technologies.

NCAM will address this problem through its Access to Locally Televised On-Screen Information project. Staff will explore and prototype DTV solutions to enable local television stations to send messages, warnings and alerts that meet the communication needs of people with sensory disabilities. Specifically, NCAM will develop procedures for enabling real-time conversion of on-screen text into speech output. Utilizing off-the-shelf speech synthesizers, staff will work with broadcast stations to make this data available via the secondary audio program (SAP) channel or auxiliary DTV audio channels. NCAM will also address display conflicts between captions and on-screen graphics by developing methods of tagging and prioritizing text and graphics messages within automated display systems.

Project activities include:

• Create metadata schemes for linking text with graphics, and for exporting text to speech synthesizers.
• Develop prototype software utilities that import data from various sources, then extract, transform and prepare it for prioritized text display or for speech output.
• Create demonstration models within newsroom facilities of partner television stations.
• Publish accessibility guidelines for local television stations which suggest implementation schemes for various equipment configurations, and provide recommendations for further study.

The participation of the Hearst-Argyle Television Station Group ensures that project outcomes will be immediately useful to the nation's broadcasters and will have a significant impact on broadcast procedures and future equipment capabilities. This project also benefits from the involvement of members of the FCC's Media Security Reliability Council (MSRC), and experts on emergency preparedness from the disability community, as well as local consumer advocates. Solutions developed through this project will result in properly formatted data that can be transmitted via the Internet or other emergency mechanisms.

For more information, contact:

Geoff Freed
Project Manager
Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media
WGBH Educational Foundation
125 Western Ave.
Boston, MA 02134
617 300-4223 voice and fax
geoff_freed@wgbh.org

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