Accessible Digital Radio Broadcast Services

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• Accessible Digital Radio Broadcast Services
• An Idea Whose Technology is Arriving
• Mike Starling
• VP, CTO Executive Director, NPR Labs
• NPR, Washington D.C.
• Dr. Ellyn Sheffield
• Cognitive Scientist
• Towson University
• ITU ICT Conference 07
• Geneva
• September 17, 2007

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Americas Only Not-for-Profit Radio Broadcast
Technology RD Center
Andrews
Evans
Starling
Kean
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Public Radio Digital Transition
DEC 06
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Why Accessible Radio?

• Radio is an immediate, companion medium that
  provides hundreds of programs not available on
  the TV or web
• Radio is available during emergencies when power
  grid is down
• For 40 years, NPR has worked on extending signal
  reach to the public, now were working on
  reaching the public better including accessibly
• Two parts of the Accessible Digital Radio
  Broadcast Service Project
• Digital radio reading services for the visually
  impaired and print handicapped
• First ever Captioned Radio for the Deaf and Hard
  of Hearing

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Accessible Radio Partners
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NPR Labs 1St Demonstration of Accessible Radio
Services Concept at NAB 2006

• Four Channel Extended-Hybrid HD Radio mode
• News - 48 kbps
• Classical - 36 kbps
• Electronic - 24 kbps
• Reading Service - 12 kbps
• 120 kbps total
• Plus Captioned Radio - 1.5 kbps

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Captioned Radio Concept Demo
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WX3NPR On Air Field Tests

• 50w Experimental FMHD station on 87.9 FM

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XNPR Video From 8/10/07
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Sharp Dual View Display Technology

• Front seat Captioning driver can see traffic
  map, while listening to radio - at the same time
  a D/HH passenger has same content on Captioned
  Radio view

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FEMA Recognizes Radios PrimacyDuring
Emergencies
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Thank You

• Comments, suggestions, questions
• Always welcome
• Mike Starling
• CTO, NPR
• mstarling_at_npr.org
• www.nprlabs.org