[Blindtlk] FW: Blindness in the News

Thu Apr 28 19:23:51 UTC 2011

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From: "Robert Hansen" <Robert.Hansen at chicagolighthouse.org>
Sent: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:12:57 Pacific Daylight Time
To: "roberthansen1970 at gmail.com" <roberthansen1970 at gmail.com>,"conibodyworks at gmail.com" <conibodyworks at gmail.com>,"don.gillmore at gmail.com" <don.gillmore at gmail.com>
Subject: FW: Blindness in the News

From: crisintern
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 2:07 PM
To: LIGHTHOUSE; zapemantus at earthlink.net; randyvirden at att.net
Subject: Blindness in the News

Blindness in the News
April 28, 2011

1.   Company paints word pictures of the wedding for the visually impaired

The Globe and Mail

April 27, 2011

2.   Lack of funding may spell end of classes for visually impaired

Daily News

April 25, 2011

3.   Marine Drive crossings unsafe, say vision impaired

BC Local News

April 27, 2011

4.   New device puts vision impaired in the picture

Physorg

April 28, 2011

1.   Company paints word pictures of the wedding for the visually impaired

["Nobody puts on a show like the Royal Family": A member of the household cavalry rides down the Mall adorned in Union flags ahead of Friday's Royal wedding. | Reuters]

TORONTO - From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Feast your ears on this: A Toronto-based media company will provide a live described-video broadcast of the royal wedding so that blind and low-sighted people across the country can enjoy all the pomp and pageantry of the big day.

"An event like the royal wedding is something that we think should be accessible to all Canadians," says David Errington, president of Accessible Media Inc.

"It's the first time that any event of this magnitude has ever been DV'd live," says producer Simone Cupid.

Described video is much different than colour commentary: It's an art form unto itself, especially when done live, Cupid says.

"A colour commentator offers interesting facts and details, and where we are and some history about that place, whereas we're trying to fill in the gaps for somebody who doesn't have the advantage of sight," she says. "It's our job to fill in the crowd's expression when [Kate Middleton] comes out of the carriage, her mother's expression the first time she sees her in her wedding dress, William when he sees her coming down the aisle, the frescoes that are painted on the ceiling of the abbey."

The two "describers," Sarah Mennell and Ruth Barrett, were chosen after an audition in which they described footage of the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

They are now busy researching everything from who will be in the audience to the type of horses that will be pulling Middleton's carriage.

"That's where the art comes in, is what's worth describing and what isn't," Mennell says. "It's a question of learning to pick out very quickly what you're seeing and what you want to convey to an audience."

They are also learning to abide by the cardinal rule of described video: "We refrain from using any turn of phrase or word that pertains to sight," Cupid says. "So we would never say something like, 'William looks at his bride,' because all you're doing is reminding your audience that they can't look and they can't see."

There is a huge amount of hype surrounding the wedding, which is guaranteed to be a massive spectacle, and describing it live to a visually impaired audience is sure to be a massive challenge, Barrett says. But it's also going to be a fun one.

"Nobody puts on a show like the Royal Family," she says.

The broadcast will be available on The Accessible Channel - TACtv.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/company-paints-word-pictures-of-the-wedding-for-the-visually-impaired/article1999475/

2.   Lack of funding may spell end of classes for visually impaired

VAN NUYS: Lack of funding may shut down campus for visually impaired.

Sarah Greenseid contentedly worked her yarn on a recent morning, her perpetual smile not entirely masking the anxiety felt by the visually impaired 99-year-old.

"It's really too bad, the possibility of the school not continuing," Greenseid said during a textile arts class at the Van Nuys School for the Blind, located in a rented classroom behind St. Andrew's Lutheran Church. "It's a very important part of everyone's life to have a place to come to where we can share our same problems, interact and still have a class.

"I will be sad if it doesn't continue."

As the Daily News reported in 2010, the school, also known as Visually Handicapped Adults of the Valley, is in a month-to-month struggle to keep offering the two classes it's managed to sustain this year. If the money isn't raised to cover classroom rental, the 39-year-old operation will have to close on May 19.

The main reason for the school's dire financial straits is the loss of its annual $75,000 Los Angeles Community Development Department grant, due to budget cutbacks and a restructuring of the agency's qualification criteria.

 Fundraising campaigns have kept the school going, and there are last-ditch efforts to stave off closure.

Ophthalmologists Kerry Assil and Thomas Tooma have each donated $6,000 Lasik surgeries to be raffled off for the benefit of Retinitis Pigmentosa International, the school's parent organization, named for a genetic eye condition that leads to incurable blindness.

Each $25 donated will earn an entry in the raffle. Other details are at www.rpinternational.org.

"We hope that the donation from NVision Laser Eye Centers will help RPI reach its financial goals to help save the Van Nuys School for the Blind because its program provides training for the social, emotional and physical implications related to losing one's vision," Tooma said in an emailed statement.

"It is their lifeline to the light," Tooma continued. "Without that school, they are in the dark. That darkness is interrupted for at least 48 hours during the week when they go to the school. It also provides them lunch and they are even sent home with food."

Back at the St. Andrew's campus, close to a dozen visually impaired people were diligently making their rugs, mufflers and caps.

"I've been coming here for nine years; I also go to ceramics on Monday," said Patricia O'Connor of West Hills, who was creating a colorful wall hanging. "It's almost like a family to us, we've been meeting here for so long and we enjoy it so much.

"It gives people who have vision problems something really worthwhile to do, and we can see the benefits of our own work."

The school's search for a less-expensive venue has, so far, proven fruitless. The church is not unsympathetic, but has its own funding needs and rents out its campus to other organizations, including a Montessori preschool, to make ends meet.

"Our people are low-vision and many of them completely blind, so it's tricky to find another place for them," noted Laura Carlone, the school's site coordinator. "Here we have access to a kitchen and the run of the place, along with the preschool."

For Greenseid, who began volunteering at the school 29 years ago and became a student when her eyesight started to fail, the weekly class has become an important part of her independent existence.

"It keeps me busy," the Sherman Oaks nonagenarian said. "I do my own cooking, bookkeeping, banking and some shopping. My lifestyle is dependent on doing as much as I can as often as I can. Coming here is one of my very high priorities.

"Every day that I come here is important," Greenseid added. "I relate to the students and it's very rewarding. It's a way from them to get out of their homes."

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_17925739

3.   Marine Drive crossings unsafe, say vision impaired

[EyeDeal_4698.jpg]

A group of vision-impaired West Vancouver residents are sounding the alarm on the district's pedestrian crossings.

Eye Deal, a four-year-old association with 35 members, is concerned about the allotted time for pedestrians at the municipality's crossing, particularly the lights along Marine Drive.

"Our fear is the vision impaired do not have the time to cross before the lights change," said Blair Baillie, the association's honorary secretary.

Even with his sight, Baillie said, he sometimes finds it difficult to make it to the other side before the flashing hand appears.

In addition, not all the crossings have sound indicators to let the blind and vision impaired know when it's safe to leave the sidewalk, he noted.

These factors make vision impaired people nervous, Baillie said. Often they'll rely on sighted pedestrians but it's not always an option, he said.

"It just seems to me there are a bunch of things we should and could be doing," Baillie said.

The organization has approached the district before with its concerns. This time they're taking them to the engineers.

The district's pedestrian-timed signals are set up to allow people one second to cover one to 1.2 metres. If anything, the time allotment is generous compared to other municipalities, said Raymond Fung, the district's director of engineering and transportation.

There is a general misunderstanding regarding what each signal means, he said. The walk sign indicates when one can safely leave the sidewalk, while the hand requires one to stay on the curb - it does not indicate a person should already be across the street.

Between 11th and 19th along Marine Drive, five of the eight traffic lights have audible pedestrian signals. The district is adding the beepers as it upgrades intersections, Fung said.

The municipality has an accessibility and inclusion policy. Recommendations from the Advisory Committee for Disability - such as fitting audible walk signs, creating accessible transit shelters and insuring grades are suitable for people in wheelchairs to board busses - have been adopted over the years.

Creating intersections that facilitate pedestrians' requirements and traffic follow is always juggling act, Fung said.

"We have to balance the needs," he said.

Eye Deal

Eye Deal aims to spotlight all issues affecting visually impaired people in the district. The association recently extended its membership to include all age groups. It organizes everything from transportation to outings downtown to supplying talking books to members to information sessions. "We are looking for more volunteers," Baillie said. "There are more things we would like to do."

http://www.bclocalnews.com/news/120808764.html

4.   New device puts vision impaired in the picture

(PhysOrg.com) -- Visually impaired people may soon have greater access to graphical information thanks to a new device developed by Monash University's Faculty of Information and Technology.

The device, called GraVVITAS, is a standard tablet PC with touch screen technology that uses vibration and sounds to guide the visually impaired user around a diagram.

It is designed to enable the user to build a picture of the entire graphic in their mind.

Currently, visually impaired students are using tactile diagrams to understand graphics. These raised shapes and textures are produced on a particular type of paper by special purpose printers, known as embossers. This method can prove to be extremely costly and can take months to produce a textbook.

The Faculty of Information and Technology's Professor Kim Marriott and PhD student Cagatay Goncu are working with Vision Australia to develop the new technology, that will make accessing diagrams for visually impaired students easier.

"The idea stemmed from a visually impaired student that I had years ago in a unit that was very diagrammatic," Professor Marriott said.

"This particular student had major problems understanding the diagrams using the methods that were available to them at the time. We wanted to try to increase accessibility to diagrams and graphics in educational material, which is a huge issue for the visually impaired."

The device, which is currently a prototype, has small external vibrating motors that attach to the user's fingers. These motors buzz when an object displayed on the screen is touched.

Cagatay Goncu said voice prompts and sounds also help to guide the user to read the diagram.

"The basic idea is to guide the user to find the object by using sound. Touching the object causes the sound to stop and a voice explains what that object is and any other information associated with it," Mr. Goncu said.

"If it's something on the left side, you will hear something in your left ear and vice-versa."

Developing the technology has involved extensive testing with visually impaired volunteers, which has allowed researchers to have a better understanding of how they read diagrams.

The next stage of development will involve collaborating with haptic feedback specialists from the Faculty of Engineering who will further refine the touch technology associated with the device.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-device-vision-impaired-picture.html

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