Please see the press release below regarding recent advancements in making in-flight communications and entertainment accessible to passengers who are deaf or hard of hearing via closed captioning. The Media Access Group at WGBH's involvement in this work comes as a result of a grant awarded to WGBH from the U.S. Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research called Access to In-Flight Communications and Entertainment.
In addition to the captioning solutions, WGBH is also working to bring described media to planes and to make user controls for in-flight media systems accessible to passengers who are blind or have low vision.
At this summer's American Council of the Blind convention in Louisville, KY, WGBH staff will be conducting user testing of a prototype device that demonstrates independent navigation via speech synthesis and large print on-screen menus of media options (movies, games, flight information, etc.) in addition to described movies. If you plan to attend ACB this summer, come by our booth in the the exhibit area to say hello and take part.
And if your plans will take you to the National Association of the Deaf conference in New Orleans, come to our presentation, Media Access Update: DTV, Mobile Media, In-Flight Entertainment and Emergency Alerts, on Friday, July 11 at 1pm.
This press release has been "picked up" by several airline industry publications, including IFExpress, which can be linked to here: http://www.airfax.com/airfax/ifexpress/ifexpress06032008.htmThe IMS Company and WGBH's Media Access Group Enable Closed Captions on Handhelds Brea, California -Southern California IFE solutions provider, The IMS Company, and the Media Access Group at WGBH in Boston, have developed a solution for the provisioning of closed-captioned media content on IMS' portable in-flight entertainment devices, it was announced by Mary Watkins, the WGBH Media Access Group's director of communications, and IMS' vice president sales and marketing Harry Gray.
The initiative, the first use of closed-captions on an IFE portable, is intended to address the increased interest by airlines in providing closed-captioned media following the announcement by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in February 2006 that it planned to require airlines flying in and out of the United States to provide closed-caption capability on inflight media. "Providing a closed- caption service on portable media players is a solution that can now be implemented cost-effectively on a near-term basis," said Gray. Closed caption content is expected to be deliverable to new portables customers on IMS' PAV-704 and PAV-705 platforms in October 2008, according to Gray.
The solution involves providing captions-text transcriptions of the audio portion of TV shows and movies for people who are deaf or hard of hearing in a player-compatible format and superimposing them on the video at the viewer's discretion. "WGBH currently creates closed captions for most major studio theatrical motion picture releases in the U.S., and, with content provider approval, will convert these captions into the player-compatible format for The IMS Company," said Larry Goldberg, director of WGBH's Media Access Group. WGBH will conform the theatrical captions to airline-edited versions as required by IMS.
Several airlines have previously relied on the closed caption capability of DVDs to accommodate the needs of deaf or hard of hearing passengers. "IMS is proud to be the first portables supplier to enable airlines to meet the needs of their passengers requiring this capability on an easy-to-use handheld platform," said Gray.
The IMS portable media player (PMP) will store the formatted electronic text on the hard disc. If the viewer elects to view the captions, he can activate them via the graphical user interface/GUI and the text is then synchronized to the video using timecode and displayed on the PMP's screen. If the viewer chooses not to watch captions, they will not be visible, according to IMS' managing director, content and media development, Michael Childers. The term "closed caption" refers to text which is accessed at the discretion of the viewer while "open captions" are always visible.
Captions, as opposed to "subtitles," reflect all of a program's audio for deaf or hard-of-hearing people, converting not only dialog into text, but also sound effects, music, speaker identifications and the like, which are needed for a more complete understanding and enjoyment of the content.
Subtitles convert the spoken dialog from one language to another for hearing viewers, and do not include non-speech information.
The World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA) and others responded to the DOT Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by explaining that IFE systems do not have the same capability as broadcast television to provide closed captions. Citing the cost of converting existing IFE systems to accommodate captions versus building them into future systems, WAEA sought to defer the DOT requirements for implementation in emerging systems.
Responding to the concerns expressed by airlines and IFE industry groups, the DOT announced in May 2008 that it would defer the requirement for an undetermined time, citing the work of WAEA's Digital Content Management Working Group (DCMWG) and its 0403 Specification as evidence that the IFE industry is migrating toward digital solutions that would facilitate closed captions in future IFE systems. The DOT will "shortly" issue a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (SNPRM) to gather more information on the capability of emerging technologies to provide a captioning solution.
The Media Access Group is a nonprofit service of Boston public broadcaster
WGBH, with offices in Boston and Los Angeles. The Group includes DVS, which
has made television, film and video more enjoyable to audiences who are
blind or visually impaired since 1990, and The Caption Center-- the world's
first captioning agency-- which has made audiovisual media accessible to
audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing since 1972. The third branch of
the Media Access Group, the WGBH-Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National
Center for Accessible Media
(NCAM), is a research and development office that works to make existing and
emerging technologies accessible to all audiences. NCAM's work on Accessible
In-flight Entertainment systems has been funded by the U.S. Department of
Education's National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research
(NIDRR), under grant number H133G050254.
For more information, go to access.wgbh.org Contact: Mary Watkins
mary_watkins@wgbh.org
Media Access Group at WGBH
617 300-3700 voice
617 300-2489 TTY
Founded in 1996, The IMS Company is an entertainment and communications
solutions provider in the travel industry serving planes, trains and
automobiles. The Entertainment Group has a focus on portable entertainment,
wireless communications, and content management services, while the
Engineering Group focuses on systems and software development. Historically,
the company's core business is the provision of advanced systems and
software engineering support to aerospace companies in the development and
deployment of the latest in in-flight entertainment, cabin avionics, and
media distribution systems. IMS has expanded into the provisioning of
content services and hardware solutions for business aviation, rental car,
rail passenger, and related markets reaching the traveling public. In 2007,
IMS was named the 24th fastest-growing privately-held company in
technology-heavy Orange County, California by the Orange County Business
Journal. See:
www.imsco.us.com
. Contact: Michael Childers,
mchilders@imsco-us.com
; Tel: 714.864.8616
Created on ... June 16, 2008