captioning NPR’s major programs

Did you know there's a company that gives deaf people access to NPR? BTS Software Solutions' "first product was used on the battlefield in Afghanistan (to) manage use of cell phones on the battlefield." Now the company "partners with Towson University to run a captioning service for deaf and hard-of-hearing NPR devotees." Read the full story here.

Gally student Sues NPR

A Gallaudet student is suing NPR for discrimination. Catherine Nugent, who is deaf, was an intern at the national radio news organization last year. Nugent says she expected to be learning about marketing. Instead, the business administration major was told to train employees as to how to sign--even though she does not have ASL teaching certification. The suit says she "was tasked with developming lesson plans for, and teaching, a summer-long daily ASL class for NPR staff." Nugent's lawsuit says she realized she was being "misled" about her internship when it became clear that Nugent was hired, not to learn, but to promote the network's diversity as part of a public relations strategy "to build enthusiasm in the media for its new outreach programming targeting deaf persons.. NPR failed to meet its legal obligations in focusing" on this. NPR fired Nugent after she persisted in asking for accommodations, rather than providing her with interpreters or interpreting software. NPR declined comment. See the full lawsuit here.

NPR's closed-captioning receiver

NPR is getting an award for its FM receiver to be used as part of an emergency alerting system for the deaf. The Consumer Electronics Association is making NPR labs an Innovations 2014 Design and Engineering Awards Honoree. The award will be presented at the CEA annual conference, which starts tomorrow in Las Vegas. The closed-captioned radio is a standalone box intended to supply emergency information whenever the power is out and WiFi isn't working. Right now, those emergency alerts are the only thing being offered, but NPR says it intends to eventually offer captioning for most of its programming. The device is being tested now along the Gulf Coast. Read more information here.

NPR Labs Brings Radio To Hearing Impaired

A team at NPR has launched an ambitious effort to make radio possible for an estimated 23 million Americans who are unable to listen to radio. The project is called Breaking the Sound Barrier. Read about it here.

EAS Test Wednesday

There will be a test of national Emergency Alert System tomorrow. It is being conducted jointly by the FCC and FEMA at 2 pm, Eastern. As we told you last week, all TV and radio stations will participate in the test, which is scheduled to last one minute, including the usual announcement that “This is a test,” followed by electronic tones. The EAS has never before been tested nationwide. This will help the FCC and FEMA to identify any problems in the alert system. On TV, the onscreen announcement will read "This is an Emergency Action Notification," but not necessarily that it is a test. Whether it does will depend on the resources of individual stations.

Captioned-Radio Display Ready

Captioned-radio will be demonstrated at the White House as part of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The new technology was developed by National Public Radio. The NPR Labs team will show government officials its prototype car dashboard featuring a captioned-radio display. The driver’s view shows GPS maps while the passenger’s view shows real-time text of audio broadcast over the radio.

Touch and Hearing

We reported yesterday about research suggesting that your sense of touch can help your hearing. National Public Radio offers a report on the study that you can read or listen to here.

Job Crunch

National Public Radio aired a story this morning about about how the economy has affected work options for the deaf. You can read the story or listen to it here.

Radio Captioning

National Public Radio plans to offer captions for its main radio programs by the end of 2009. NPR Labs is using new digital radio technology to deliver signals to new captioned radio receivers. NPR’s goal is to generate captions for about 100 hours of live programs per week. The HD radio technology was tested during the election, to allow the deaf to enjoy NPR’s coverage that evening.

The plan is to combine the radio with an IBM speech-to-text program that's under development. That would give listeners real-time translation, rather than a typical 20 minute delay. The NPR researchers developing the technology will meet with receiver makers next month to encourage them to produce units capable of decoding and displaying the captions. Harris Broadcast has contributed $50,000 to the effort along with engineering support.

Captioned Radio: Election Coverage

You can see read text of National Public Radio's election returns and commentary between 8 pm and 11 pm Eastern this evening. It’s the first time, you’ll be able to follow NPR’s coverage through captioning. Harris is providing the new high-definition radio technology with help from broadcast engineers in Palm Bay, Florida. People who have high-definition radios will be able to follow spoken election coverage in caption form through displayed text.

Text Radio

A new devise could show deaf people what’s being said over the radio. It’s a product developed by the Harris Corporation and involves a receiver and screen that would scroll text much like closed captions roll by on TV. The feature has the backing of National Public Radio. NPR put a prototype text radio on display at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The text-scrolling service will use the new HD Radio technology. When radio broadcasters switch from analogue to digital, they get extra bandwidth to use for other transmissions. Texting is just one of the possibilities. To begin with, the radio text service would operate like closed captioning, where someone will type what is being said on the radio into a computer system in real time. One of the big manufacturers of HD Radios, Radiosophy, plans to produce a tabletop radio this fall, capable of providing the transcripts. Listeners will have to sign up and register their radios in order to get an unlock code sent to their radios that will activate the reception. Congress granted a conditional access exemption from most copyright laws for the deaf, so they aren't in violation for receiving copyrighted material in a usable format.