99-339 11/24/99 Dr. R. I. Feigenblatt POB 1069 Buchanan GA 30113 N/A N/A CO N/A Scheme to leverage volunteers to produce SAP audio description of TV neohephaestus@mail.geocities.com Regarding http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Notices/1999/fcc99353.html, Broadcasters can offer two objections to the demand they include audio descriptive services with their television (TV) programs. One is that something like an SAP channel is already occupied, for example, by a second language track (e.g. Spanish). The second objection is the cost of producing audio description of the video, and it is this latter point we address here. I am aware that organizations like AFTRA exist to drive up the cost of video production by limiting the supply of labor. If the rules put in place do not confront this problem, my suggestion will be of little avail. But let's imagine volunteer or non-professional labor can be used to provide audio description of TV programming. How can the FCC and the industry cooperate to facilitate this effort? There are millions of multimedia PCs in America's homes and other places that are capable of producing an acceptable, if not optimal service. Think of them as "amateur outsourced" "Recording for the Blind" studios. (Note I do not here address the issues raised by copyright law pertaining to the production of audio descriptions of TV.) Broadcasters can be required to make a modest-grade digitized CD-ROM copy of their program in advance of its broadcast. Most likely, this would be a requirement they would often delegate to the original producers. These CD-ROM versions can be watched by volunteer audio annotators on a modern PC with a full-duplex audio card and CD-ROM drive. Standardized editing software can be used to play, pause, etc. the video while recording audio spoken into a microphone. No, the quality of such an effort will not be up to the very high standards of the broadcast industry in many cases. But the blind and VI would surely welcome an existing ADEQUATE effort, no worse than supplied by a family member, rather than count on a NON-EXISTING professional rendering. The synchronous audio track produced by the volunteer could be sent to the supplier of the preview CD-ROM by one of two means. Either the audio file could be uploaded over the Internet, or the volunteer could use one of the very cheap CD-R writing devices now in common use to produce a copy using a $1 blank CD-R disk. Aspiring professional "voice talents" would be inclined to undertake such work for the sake of experience and potential marketing. (Volunteers could be permitted a 5-second "ad" as reward for their efforts, etc.) Social organizations like the Boy Scouts and churches could do such work too. If the questions raised by labor and copyright law can be addressed, we can tap a potentially vast pool of underutilized computing hardware to serve the needs of the blind and VI. I envision a technical committee defining a method of qualifying a PC through a piece of test software as well as defining an editing software suite and digital media encoding standards. By providing COMMON standards, ANY volunteer individual or organization could be tapped by ANY broadcaster, and people could find partners based on ability and interest, rather than inessential preoccupation with troublesome technical issues. Indeed, the homebound, perhaps handicapped or elderly, might also find at-home PAID employment if they are able to participate in this program. Finally, this scheme would provide an avenue for a more enlightened and diversified method of the voluntary censorship of television programming than the so-called V-chip. Censoring organizations could register with the FCC and preview programming for objectionable content of WHATEVER criteria. The FCC could uniquely number screened programs, these numbers could be advertised in advance of actual broadcast, and each registered censoring organization could provide advance viewing guidance, whether by printed newsletter, e-mail or Web site. As digital technology advanced, TV owners like the parents of children could subscribe to one or more censoring organizations to AUTOMATICALLY control what their kids could view on the home TV, according to the *UNIQUE* values of their household. Such censoring organizations might have their roots in a church, a fraternal or philanthropic organization, or even a social action committee. All this would be made not only possible, but ECONOMICAL, by leveraging the MASSIVE base of multimedia PCs in the United States through the FCC's technical DEFINITION of a previewing scheme. As technology advances and the number of media "broadcasters" multiply, to be joined by ever-more-important "narrowcasters" using things like the Internet, the scheme proposed here provides a realistic and economical means of allowing program previews which enable features like audio annotation and censorship. Dr. R. I. Feigenblatt neohephaestus@geocities.com The Hephaestus Project http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Sauna/4533/