Sunday, January 06, 2008

Captioned Radio--Don't Read and Drive!

Tim Poindexter over at Disaboom posted a recent release about captioned radio:

Closed Captioned Radio? That's Right, It's Here!

The first over-the-air broadcast is set for January 8, 2008.

Back in April, 2006, the actual idea was demonstrated at a Broadcasting Conference: Harris Corporation and NPR Labs to Demonstrate New HD Radio Services for Hearing and Visually Impaired at NAB2006.

I remember reading about this back on Jared's Blog awhile back, but I didn't pay attention to it much. The radio was something that has been off-limits in my life for so long, that I didn't even think of the impact of captioned radio.

I can imagine that captioned radio is going to be a great tool for adults and children with new implants as they'll be able to use the radio to practice listening therapy.

It's going to be interesting to see how this develops. All radio transmissions are supposed to convert to digital by 2010. This doesn't yet mean that all will be transmitting captions, but the capability is there.

If they're installing captioned radios in the front dash of a car-- uh oh! I have a feeling we'll be seeing some multi-tasking drivers out there.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

CLOSED CAPTION HDRADIO IS GOOD DUE SOMETIME IT BACK UP TRAFFIC AND GET SOME NEWS WHAT WRONG WITH ROAD LIKE FLOW TOO MUCH TRAFFIC OR ACCIDENT ON ROAD EASY NOTICE GET OFF ON EXIT BEFORE TRAFFIC OR BAD STORM COME IN SOON OR NEXT DAY WARNING THAT WHY IT IS BEST FOR EVERYONE WHO DONT HAVE NO TIMES ON HOME FOR NEWS KEEP BUSY FOR CHILDREN AND COOK DINNER. I THINK IT IS GREAT FOR EVERYBODY CAN USE HD RADIO. ALSO GOOD SMOOTH QUIET ROAD NO TRAFFIC CAN USE MUSIC WITH CLOSED CAPTION WHAT THEY SING ABOUT IT . SO WE DONT NEED NAG HEARING PEOPLE WHAT DOES RADIO OR MUSIC SAID ?? SO HD RADIO SAVE OUR TIMES NO NAG HEARING PEOPLE AND LET HEARING PEOPLE GET HARD BELIEVE DEAF CAN DO IT ANYTHING. I WOULD LIKE HAVE MYSELF WHEN IT READY TO SPREAD OUT BUT REMEMBER DONT DRIVE WHEN TRAFFIC RUSH SLOW MOVEMENT.

Anonymous said...

Well, I think that's a cool idea, yeah, but "good listening practice" for implanted adults and kids?

Sigh...

Karen Putz said...

Jon wrote: "Well, I think that's a cool idea, yeah, but "good listening practice" for implanted adults and kids?

Sigh..."

Yup! A couple of my friends with implants are always looking for ways to practice with their implants and having access to the written words on the radio would be a great way for them to do this.

Dianrez said...

Radio has been dying for quite a long time and is essentially a vehicle for commercials and music now-- listening for information is becoming less available.

When the day comes that video is cheap and freely available on portable devices and in automombiles, that will be when radio disappears. Hopefully the new devices will have rolling captions of some kind, but that may have to be legislated.

groovyoldlady said...

Now instead of "Hang up and DRIVE!" I'll have to say, "Turn off your radio and DRIVE!"

Anonymous said...

I'd never heard of this - I learn so much from you! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Best wishes!

Kim said...

This is way cool! I haven't been able to hear talk radio in years! :-)

Nadene said...

Actually this was discussed at the 2006 ALDA conference and I can't remember the name of the business person who presented on this topic, but he made a big issue of saying, "this is NOT intended for use while driving," even though we all knew that's why we wanted it!