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<DIV>The Other Side to CC</DIV>
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<P class=Article-Column-1>by Craig Johnston, 10.15.2009<BR><SPAN
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<DIV class=Article-Column-1><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR><!--<b><div style='font-family:Arial; font-size:10pt;'>Markey bill could revive video description battle</b></div><br/>--><SPAN
id=ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_lblContentTop><STRONG>SEATTLE</STRONG><BR>Video
description and closed captioning are two sides of the same coin: descriptions
providing blind and visually impaired television viewers an audio narrator's
depiction of the video portion of a television program, captions providing deaf
and hard of hearing viewers video text of what's spoken in the audio portion of
a program. But there's a wide gulf between the presence of the two services in
television programming today. <BR><BR></DIV>
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src="http://www.tvtechnology.com/uploadedImages/TV_Technology/Home_Cover_Storty/otherSide1_1021.jpg">
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV>
<DIV class=Article-Column-1>By 1989, virtually the entire primetime schedule on
the major broadcast networks was captioned, and today much of cable network fare
and local news programs provide captions. Captions are viewed not just by those
with hearing problems, but by people in sports bars, fitness clubs and other
areas where a noisy environment makes it impossible to hear a program's
audio.</DIV>
<DIV class=Article-Column-1>In contrast, a relative handful of programs in the
multi-hundred channel universe provide video description service, among them
Fox's "The Simpsons," CBS's "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," an impressive
portion of PBS's schedule, and some programs and movies on cable networks,
particularly Nicke-lodeon and Turner Classic Movies. <BR><BR>The reasons for the
disparity in availability between the two services fall into the regulatory,
cost, and technical categories. <BR><BR><STRONG>MARKEY BILL</STRONG> <BR><BR>In
the mid-1990s, the FCC began preparing timelines and requirements for both
closed captions and video description. They adopted regulatory requirements for
both, but while the closed caption provisions got a relatively free ride, the
television and motion picture industries fought requirements for video
descriptions in court in 2002, claiming the commission did not have authority to
issue such requirements. The industry won and those regulations were tossed out.
<BR><BR>That legal rampart to the commission's requirements may be breached in
the near future, as Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has introduced H.R.
3101, the "Twenty-first Century Communi-cations and Video Accessibility Act of
2009," which, if passed, provides the FCC the authority to issue video
description requirements and instructs the commission to get after it.
<BR><BR>Cost for adding descriptions to a feature film has been estimated from
around $5,000 to $10,000. Costs for an hour of television programming are
approximately $1,000 per hour to $4,000 per hour—all in all, significantly more
than captioning. <BR><BR>"The major cost is time-on-task, human capital that
actually has to digest, synopsize, write and place the content that would be the
description around the product," said John Mazza, vice president of sales for
CaptionMAX, a Minneapolis-base company that provides description services. The
more information the producer sent along with copy of the program, the less
Mazza's crew would have to do, and the less it would cost. <BR><BR>"You can send
us the program on a DVD, on a tape, you can FTP a low res file, send us a hard
drive or a thumb drive," he said. "I'm really able to take just about any format
for ingestation." </SPAN></DIV><SPAN
id=ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_lblContentBottom>
<DIV class=Article-Column-1><STRONG>DTV CONVERTER BOXES</STRONG> <BR><BR>Getting
the descriptions on the program is the straightforward part. Getting that audio
to the viewer's ears has turned out to be more of an adventure. <BR><BR>The
ATSC, in its Digital Audio Compression Standard (AC-3, E-AC-3) for DTV,
specified a "VI" (visually impaired) channel specifically to carry video
descriptions. That guided DTV encoder and transmission providers, as well as DTV
set makers, cable and satellite providers. <BR><BR></DIV>
<DIV class=Article-Column-1>
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<TD vAlign=top align=left><IMG
src="http://www.tvtechnology.com/uploadedImages/TV_Technology/Home_Cover_Storty/otherSide2_1021.jpg">
</TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD vAlign=top align=left><FONT size=1
face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><EM>Larry Goldberg,
WGBH Media Access Center
</EM></FONT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV>
<DIV class=Article-Column-1>The National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA), which administered the $40 coupon program for DTV
converter boxes, only recommended that coupon-eligible boxes provide for access
to video descriptions, but many manufacturers offered that capability.
<BR><BR>Still, there have been problems. "We're beginning to realize that the
problems are spinning mostly from technical issues related to how programs are
tabbed with the proper descriptors that flag a set-top box or DTV that there's
another audio channel there that you can access," said Larry Goldberg, director
of media access at WGBH, who oversees the Boston public station's Media Access
Center. The Media Access Center also provides video description services.
<BR><BR>Goldberg chairs a subgroup the FCC has empanelled, which includes set
makers, cable, satellite and broadcast representatives, to hash out such
technical issues. In the case of the broadcaster, he said it is important to
check the PSIP (Program and System Information Protocol) metadata accompanying
each described program to ensure it indicates the program is described. The
subgroup meets every two weeks over the phone, and will have a face-to-face
meeting at the FCC on Nov. 9. <BR><BR>Back in 1998, at a meeting of the Advisory
Committee on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters,
Nolan Crabb, then editor of the American Council of the Blind's Braille Forum,
and himself blind, anticipated a very real problem at the end of the video
description chain: "If you've ever shut your eyes and tried to work with the
on-screen menu on your television set you know that that's a very difficult
thing indeed." <BR><BR>Goldberg added that blind viewers "need pretty much
across the board sighted assistance to turn on the descriptions today."
<BR><BR>Various surveys have looked at blind viewers' preferences as to which
programs should be described. Those studies indicate blind viewers feel they are
fairly well served by the existing audio on news programming, but want
descriptions for drama and sitcom programs. And in case you see a disconnect
between blind people and TVs, Crabb, in his 1998 presentation, cited a U.S.
Department of Education study carried out by the American Foundation for the
Blind: 99 percent of blind and low vision people own television
sets.<BR><BR></SPAN></DIV></DIV></MailScannerForm3395></DIV></BODY></HTML>