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November 1999
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November 1999
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A History Lesson: "Equal Access: From the 1950s to the Future."
NCAM Media Access Issue 9
Reprinted by permission
In the beginning, media access consisted of subtitled movies shown in smoky living rooms and other deaf club gatherings. Today, you can stream accessible live video direct to your computer from anywhere in the world.
In between is a nearly 50-year effort, funded largely by the government, to assure that our nation's disabled citizens enjoy equal access to the new media and information technologies that are changing the world. During this last half-century, WGBH and its Business Partners have played a key role in leveling the playing field of the Information Age.
In the late 1950s and throughout the '6os accessible media meant 16mm films captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. It wasn't until the 1970 s that television, the most pervasive medium in the country, also became accessible for this audience. With funding from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, WGBH created the first nationally broadcast captioned program, Julia Child's The French Chef, which aired on PBS in 1972. These early 'open" captions were visible to all audiences, as was the case for the 1972 broadcast of President Nixon's inaugural and The Captioned ABC News throughout the '70s.
Meanwhile, WGBH, PBS, and ABC engineers developed and tested the "line-21" closed captioning system that made it possible to insert caption data into a television signal by ig8o. Finally, deaf and hard-of-hearing people's choices began to expand as the closed-caption decoder became the 'killer app," the first closed-captioned programs were PBS's Masterpiece Theatre, ABC's Mod Squad, and CBS's nighttime soap opera, Dallas.
During the 1980s, with the growing availability of personal computers and continued substantive support from the Department of Education, major milestones were set: the first live closed-captioned news program (using the talents of a court reporter); the first dual-language captioned program (The Voyage of the Mimi); and the first video descriptions for blind and visually impaired television viewers. This last breakthrough is a sterling example of how new technologies can be exploited for unintended purposes. Using the ancillary or second audio program (SAP) channel available on stereo TVs and VCRs, which was originally intended as a conduit for Spanish audio dubbing, key visual elements of a TV program are narrated and carefully interwoven with the main program's soundtrack. The SAP channel became the home of the new Descriptive Video Service in 1985.
The 1990s exploded with media access activity. Starting with 100% captioning of network and prime-time programming, the decade also saw the successful implementation of the TV Decoder Act, descriptions for home videos and IMAX movies, live captioning on the Web, and captioned CD-ROMs like Microsoft's Encarta.
The unprecedented growth of the Internet, however, created roadblocks for people with sensory disabilities. Though the World Wide Web began as an accessible text-based medium, more sophisticated graphical interfaces soon created barriers for people who are blind or visually impaired. The increasing popularity of interactive multimedia, text, graphics, sound, and video, also presented new challenges for disabled users.
Fortunately, developments in access technology are catching up with the growth of these new media. Financial and engineering support has been provided by federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education along with dozen of companies such as Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Ben Atlantic, Apple, and assistive technology vendors. NCAM's Media Access Generator, CD-ROM prototypes, and models for accessible online courses are paving way for access to the fast-paced world of new media.
The newest and most complex of the new media is digital television. While some TV stations have already begun to broadcast digital programming, NCAM, with support from the Department of Education and a group of dedicated Business Partners are quickly developing solutions for delivering captions and descriptions, and for providing access to complex and highly graphic on-screen menus.
The future is likely to bring more specialized and portable electronic devices, more advanced hybrids of the Internet and television, and new communications technologies for your car, your pocket. By working together home, your wrist, and early, NCAM, its Business Partners, other product developers, our constituents can successfully apply our ingenuity to ensure that all people have equal access to whatever technological advancements the new millennium brings.
Visit the NCAM Website for:
- Current Web Accessibility Guidelines.
- Digital TV Accessibility Issues.
- Regulatory Updates.
- The Latest on Java Accessibility.
- NCAM in the News.
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