[Blindtlk] Some Questions About Watching/Accessing Television

[Gary Wunder]

I like all of the Internet services that provide television, but I also hope
that we get some access to the mainstream television services.  I have
purchased a fantastic package from Charter cable, but many of the services
are difficult if not impossible to use.  I have this fantastic set top box
that will let me start recording a show, go off and have supper, rewind the
show to where I left off, let me watch it, and keep on recording it.  I
think it will even let me record on one channel and watch on another.  All
of that is great, but it requires being able to deal with the on-screen
menus in order to press the right buttons.  Of course we have promises that
charter cable will soon have its materials in braille and will have a set
top box the talks, but it is hard to know when that will happen.

I agree with the comments about wanting an easier way to get to the
descriptive video that is available.  Television has changed a lot since I
was a child.  The Westerns my father used to love watching had a lot of
dialogue in them.  The gunfights sometimes provided a minute or two of
suspense, but mostly you didn't need descriptive video to tell you who lived
and who died.  The guys who died never seemed to draw the speaking parts
after that.

There are television shows I can't follow without some visual description
and movies in which not one word is spoken until about 10 minutes have gone
by.  Scenes seem to change more quickly, and current movies seem to focus
much more on dramatic visualizations than they do a great dialogue.  I'm
really excited about the software being developed that will let us take the
audio from a television show, send it through our smart phones, and have
them search for corresponding audio descriptions to go along with the video
being shown.

When it comes to accessibility, there's a great deal we are lacking and have
to fight for, but we have lots of things now that we only dreamed of having
when I was a child and some things we never would've conceived of.  A
telephone that plays games, radio stations, and lets me listen to albums
before I purchase them: who would've thought it could happen, but it has.
My iPhone may not be the easiest telephone I've ever used, but it is
certainly the best radio a hundred and nine dollars a month can buy.