[Faith-Talk] Intro and Seeking Advise on Accessibility of Prayer Paths

[Tina Hansen]

My name is Tina Hansen, and I wanted to write to this list for advice and
ideas.

 

I know many churches do a prayer path around this time of year. The church I
attend has done this, as it's done for a lot of years.

 

I want to get ideas on how to work with  these experiences as a blind person
and share what I've done so I might find ways to improve the experience for
future prayer paths.

 

Incidentally, this church  has sometimes done something similar at
Christmas.

 

Anyway, here's what tipically happens. When members walk through the prayer
path, they are given a booklet to guide them. The booklet contains the story
from the Bile relating to either Christmas or Easter. The one I did the
other day was for Easter, so that's what I'll use.

 

In the past,  I have used a pen-friend-like device to place audio labels on
the book's pages. A friend and I walked through the path together, and the
friend read from the book. She also assisted with any activities the guide
book asked anyone walking the path to do. We recorded the material on
location while we were going through it.

 

Last year, my friend and I were reminded to keep voices low. This church
wishes to maintain an atmosphere of meditation, reflection and
contemplation. Because of this, I decided to forego the audio labeling unit
in favor of an mp3 player. My friend and I found a location within the
church to set up my recording equipment, and we recorded the material before
going through the prayer path. I used a Victor Reader unit to record the
material and to play it back.

 

Later that night, I had the opportunity to go through it again with a group.
This time, since the recordings were mp3 files, I dumped them on my phone
and played them through one of my favorite apps, Voice Dream Reader. Since
these prayer paths are sequential, you can't skip ahead.

 

I also was able to use a Bluetooth headset with controls for playing and
pausing the recording. I was able to control the volume of the audio, and my
phone was stowed in my backpack the whole time.

 

One issue that is more difficult to resolve is when you're asked to write
something down at a station. This happened several times, and I needed to
whisper in my friend's ear. I'm wondering if there are any other
work-arounds that I might use when this happens next time.

 

I realized, too, that with many of these prayer paths, there are words on
the wall put there by the staff. I asked a church staff member to write up
concise descriptions of each station so I'd have some idea of what it looked
like.

 

Each year, the staff usually sends me an electronic copy of the guide book.
In my view, this is useful for getting some sense of what to expect, but
it's not uncommon for something to go wrong in the formatting of my copy.
I've seen words run together, or I've seen words cut off.

 

I thought about using Voiceover or any of the electronic voices within Voice
Dream Reader, but I was nervous about doing that. For one thing, either the
church staff or I would need to do some heavy editing to ensure the software
read it right. Also, even though there is technology involved, I wanted to
keep the human touch in there. I wanted to have the feeling that a friend is
guiding you through the event, and one who understands the material. The
software is just reading, as Shakespeare would say, words, words, words. It
doesn't know anything about the mood of the material. Yet my friend, who
also happens to have a wonderful reading voice, brought the narrative alive.
I felt a part of it.

 

So here's the other dilemma. Because there is no dedicated space, it's not
possible to prepare accessible materials a month in advance. This year, I
received the material on Sunday night. Because the church used a location
that is used for other events, the path is not ready until that weenend
before it opens. However, I knew this was coming up, so I had already called
my voice talent.

 

But the station descriptions needed to be prepared at the last minute.

 

When my voice talent and I got to the church, there they were, so we just
added them at the beginning of each station in the guide book.

 

I have suggested the church consider offering a recording of the guide book
for everyone done by their staff. Since this church is fairly large, I'm
sure there is someone who could do it. However, if they can't do it, what we
did worked out well. I don't want to use text to speech software, only
because of the need for one of us to edit the fils, and I want to maintain
the human element.

 

So that's what I did this year. Do any of you have ideas on how I can
improve  on that? Thanks.