FCC considers 'captions' for blind

By KALPANA SRINIVASAN

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON --- Chet Avery picks the television shows he tunes into very carefully. Dramatic programs with lots of dialogue are fine.

Avery is blind. That means shows with high-action content and little conversation are difficult for him to follow.

"When you watch television, you rely upon the kindness of your wife or members of your family to fill in when there is silence," said Avery, 62, a retired Education Department administrator who lives in the Washington suburb of Arlington, Va. "I know some blind people that never watch television because of the frustration. Television is not for them."

Federal regulators and advocates for the blind say the time has come to give those with impaired vision access akin to what the deaf have with closed captioning.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to offer proposals today on how to mandate video description services, which describe the scene and action not captured in dialogue, for television programming.

"We must ensure they're full participants in the information age," FCC Chairman Bill Kennard said in an interview. "If you think of it as an afterthought, it doesn't get done."

That is one reason regulators and advocates want to act now so they can set the stage to bring those services along as television makes the transition from analog to digital.

There are 1.6 million blind people in the nation, but as many as 9 million have vision problems such that they could benefit from television description services, says Corinne Kirchner, director of policy research at the American Foundation for the Blind.

The service works like this: Descriptions of events are squeezed into the natural pauses already in the program.

This is typically done using a separate audio track that audiences can switch on or off. A secondary soundtrack channel also is commonly used to provide Spanish language dubbing of programming. Since 1993, all television sets manufactured in the United States have been equipped to receive this secondary audio track.

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