[mountainstate] Join in the Celebration and Discussion about Described TV--Read One Advocacy Pioneer's Story, Get Involved

[A. C. McGhee]

Advocacy Pioneer's Story, Get Involved





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It Gets Personal!
A Described TV Advocacy Pioneer Celebrates New Era of Accessible 
Programming
Invites You to Join the Conversation!


For further information, contact:

Mark Richert, Esq.
Director, Public Policy, AFB
(202) 469-6833
MRichert at afb.net

Now that a new era of accessible TV viewing through mandatory 
video
description has dawned on July 1, a founding father of the 
movement to make
it happen reflects on the long and winding journey that the 
vision loss
community has taken to achieve this milestone in full and equal
participation in American life.  Read the below personal account 
of Paul
Schroeder, AFB's Vice President for Programs and Policy, 
celebrate with us
the video description accomplishment that so many in our field 
helped to
make possible, and join in the conversation about where we are 
and where we
need to go from here by commenting on Paul's blog post at:

http://www.afb.org/blog

Watching TV Blind: A Love-Hate Relationship

by

Paul W.  Schroeder

I have a longstanding love hate relationship with television.  
And, for 20
years now, video description has hung like a shadow over this 
relationship.

I grew up on the great classic comedies of the 1970s: "All in the 
Family,"
"The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and "M.A.S.H." I spent far too many 
summer
vacation hours lazily watching shows from "Love Boat" to 
gameshows.  I later
adopted sitcoms like "Cheers" and "The Cosby Show," along with a 
sprinkling
of a few medical and legal dramas.  In other words, I was a 
pretty typical
American TV watcher.

Yet, there was always a disappointing aspect to TV programs 
(okay, there are
many in fact, but that's another story).  There was always the 
question:
"What's going on?" And too often, there wasn't anyone willing or 
able to
answer it for me.  After all, as a blind person, I missed the 
visual
information the programs presented: telltale facial expressions, 
audience
laughter not triggered by dialogue, the silent entrance of a new 
character
and, of course, the complete shift of setting.  These, and many 
other aspects
about television, are confounding to people who cannot see the 
screen (or
who cannot see it very well).

As a consequence, I have what may be unhealthy love for the work 
of Aaron
Sorkin, the screenwriter whose shows from "Sports Night," to 
"West Wing," to
"Studio 60" were heavily dialogue-driven.  These days, I'm 
finding very
little TV that I want to watch, and I'm mostly snarling at my 
teen and
young-adult daughters about their TV viewing choices (typical 
parent, I
guess).

Meanwhile, in the 1990s, WGBH brought us its Descriptive Video 
Service
(DVS), which brought movies and some public television shows to 
life.  For
me, and as importantly, my sighted family, DVS was a blessing, 
providing
much more information about movies and shows, thereby relieving 
my family of
the pressure to provide haphazard description.

Also during the early 90s, closed captioning was beginning to 
take off,
providing access for people who are deaf or have hearing loss.  
Disability
advocates (yours truly among them) began pushing for a law to 
require TV
programs to be captioned and described.  In 1996, Communications 
Act
amendments were passed, bringing us Section 255, which required
telecommunications access, but also Section 713, which required 
captioning
of TV programs.  Advocates tried hard at that time to get 
description
required as well, but representatives of the television industry 
strenuously
objected to description; apparently captioning would be accepted 
as a
requirement, but description would not.

Nonetheless, the 1996 Act did require the Federal Communications 
Commission
(FCC) to study description, and in 2000 the agency announced that 
it would
require the broadcast networks as well as the largest 
nonbroadcast networks
(generally this means cable networks), to provide 50 hours per 
quarter of
programming with video description.  The FCC believed it had the 
authority to
require what amounts to a "pilot" effort of this sort.  So, in 
April 2002,
the requirement went into effect, and several networks started 
airing
programs with description.  However, the TV industry asked the 
courts to
overturn the FCC requirement.  Unfortunately, the Court of 
Appeals for the
District of Columbia agreed, and tossed out the requirement.

Since that time, AFB and other advocates have worked to 
"reinstate" those
minimal requirements, and we were finally successful in the 
Communications
and Video Accessibility Act of 2010.  So, that is how we ended up 
with this
small but important step being taken now (as of July 2012) by the 
broadcast
and top nonbroadcast TV networks to provide approximately four 
hours per
week (50 hours per calendar quarter) of programs with video 
description.

So now what?

The two big immediate challenges for TV viewers with vision loss 
are to
figure out which programs have description and how to set their 
TV to
receive it.  For information about programs, the best source 
right now is

www.VideoDescription.info

which links to a page at the FCC with lots of resources and lists 
of
programs that networks have indicated they are planning to 
provide with
description.  As for how to set the TV to get the description 
track, see the
information we've compiled at

www.AFB.org/VideoDescription

As we learn more, we'll fill in details.  And, if the programs 
you want
aren't described, let the networks know you'd like them to be 
described.  If
you aren't able to receive the description track, let your TV 
provider or
broadcast station hear from you.

Personally, I'm curious about ABC's "Modern Family," and NBC's 
"The Office,"
which are now supposed to be described.  In fact, I used to watch 
"The
Office," but got tired of trying to follow the constant scene 
changes and
weird switching between monologues and dialogue.

I'm definitely not the best person to tell you to watch more TV, 
but I
suspect many of you, like most Americans, already watch a decent 
amount.  I
hope you will take a look at some of the programs that are to be 
described,
and I hope you will let the networks know that you'd like to see 
more
described programming.  And, tell us about your experiences with 
description
too.  That's something we can all tune into.

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