Assistive Technologies

Taylor and I have been revisiting the American Sign Language
alphabet we used for fun when he was little.
He doesn’t remember the ASL alphabet well at this point, so I shape the
letters with my fingers as he feels the shape of my hand and mimics.  We went through the first half-dozen signs
for letters, and with his short-term memory sporadic and unreliable; we went
over it a few times.  And then we spelled some words with those
letters.  He did well.

Sometime later, he was side-stepping in between the coffee
table and the sofa to position himself to recline and watch a movie.  I thought it was a good idea to review before
we got too comfortable for the night.
When I asked him for a quick review of the signs, he pulled his hands
from his pockets, brought both hands into view, and held his flat hands in a
“T” – for “time out.”

Okay.  Fine. Never
mind.

We planned to watch The
Avengers.  The movie sat on the
coffee table days after grabbing it from our local Redbox.  I generally “narrate” stuff in the movies if
it is something he should be able to picture for the sake of the
movie/action.  I was leery of taking this
on for The Avengers.  Not only am I NOT a
Marvel Comic aficionado, I knew things would be super visual in this movie and
happening pretty quickly.  I wasn’t sure
if I could pull off helping him with what was going on without frustrating him.

We talked about it, and I explained if he wasn’t into it, we
could find something else to do.

When I was working my way through the main menu on the DVD,
I saw the typical choices of Subtitles, French, Spanish, and then “action
description narrative”.  Neither Taylor
nor I had ever heard of this so we decided to check it out.

SO COOL!

Action Description Narrative is also referred to as “DVS.”  The Descriptive
Video Service is used to narrate descriptions of key visual
elements.

Much like Closed Captioning
for the hearing impaired, DVS is an available feature of selected programming,
and has been available nearly 25 years!
WGBH of Boston, Massachusetts, member of PBS, began investigating uses
for the new technology of stereophonic television broadcasting, particularly
multichannel television sound (MTS), which allowed for a third audio channel,
called the Secondary Audio Program (SAP).
With a history of developing closed captioning of programs for the
hearing-impaired, WGBH considered the viability of using the new audio channel
for narrated descriptions of key visual elements.  DVS became a regular feature of selected PBS programming
in 1990.

DVS describers watch a program and write a script describing
visual elements which are important in understanding what is occurring at the
time and plot as a whole.  The length of
descriptions and their placement by a producer into the program are largely
dictated by what can fit in natural pauses in dialogue.

DVS branched out to non-PBS programming, and shortly
thereafter description could be heard on the SAP for shows such as CSI, The
Simpsons, etc., as well as feature films.

Check out:  http://www.wgbh.org/about/disabilityservices.cfm

There are also movie theaters equipped with DVS technology –
with a headset!  So cool…..

Taylor met with the Arizona Center for the Blind and hearing
impaired yesterday to discuss his upcoming classes for assistive technologies,
etc.  He met Adam, the IT director for
the program, who walked him through some basics of what he’ll be doing.  Taylor opened Word, created a file, named and
saved it, closed Word, then went to the web for browsing, all with shortcut
keys and audio feedback.  Taylor was
grinning ear-to-ear.

**The file Taylor created was a Word document with the
following text:  “this opens a whole new
world for me.”  Then he named the file
his name, and saved it.  True story.  I’m really not making this stuff up.

Oh, and Adam, the IT guru – blind since birth.

They really hit it off.
And Adam explained to Taylor, that this sort of technology will be great
for him to know – well – even if he gets his vision back to where he does not
need it.  There are always volunteer
opportunities to help others.

Taylor smiled all the way back to the apartment; shades on, window down, music jamming.