I am strongly in favor of the proposed rule making on video
description. Approval and implementation of the rule will provide
substantial benefit to visually impaired viewers. My opinion is mostly
based on a
1997 report published by American Federation for the Blind entitled "Who's
Watching? A Profile of the Blind and Visually Impaired Audience for
Television and Video" prepared by Jaclyn Packer and Corinne Kirchner. In
addition I served for 4 years as a member of the DVS National Advisory
Board (established under the WGBH Foundation).
The AFB report states approximately 3% of the US population are visually
impaired people who can benefit from video description. Of this 3% about
20% are most likely to benefit. They are likely to be older, unemployed,
better educated, women, have other disabilities and have no useful or very
limited vision. Described video programming should be directed to serve
this audience segment on a priority basis since they are likely to be early
adopters and lead others to adopt the new technology.
A May 1993 report by Dr. Arnold Katz, a DVS Advisory Board member, based on
his research using students, showed that their level of comprehension of
video material was dramatically increased by video description. For
students whose vision was artificially impaired, comprehension with video
description was increased to levels near the levels of non-visually
impaired students without description. For non-visually impaired students,
video description increased their comprehension of the material by
approximately 20%. Described programming should also be directed to serve
the student and children audience. Note that since video description helps
the comprehension of both visually impaired and non-visually impaired
students, in some situations video descriptions can be run on an open basis
(non-SAP).
Eighty-seven percent (87%) of the individuals in the AFB report defined as
most likely to benefit from video description had not heard of it. Even if
the proposed rule is put into effect, there will still be a large need to
make the potential beneficiaries aware of its availability. Promotional
messages with open description is most likely the most effective approach.
The final barrier to the full adoption of video description by the visually
impaired is the lack of availability of SAP decoders. This can be overcome
by the FCC requiring SAP decoders in all new TVs.