When explaining web accessibility to the uninitiated I find that it sometimes helps to apply the concept to other mediums. Here’s an example I hadn’t thought of before. Imagine trying to watch The Simpsons without actually watching The Simpsons. Each episode has a million little sight gags and visual clues that fly by so quickly that you practically need a TiVo to keep up.
So how do visually impaired people watch The Simpsons? With the Descriptive Video Service (DVS) of course. DVS is an audio track that explains the action taking place in a television program. With The Simpsons that includes reading all of the oddball signs that fly by during the course of an episode (not to mention Bart’s scribbling on the chalk board at the start of each episode).
WFMU’s station manager Ken has an interesting post about his accidental discovery of the DVS signal while battling with his broken VCR. Like many people, he hadn’t really given any thought to how visually impaired users might watch and enjoy programs like The Simpsons. At first he assumed The Simpsons were doing a parody of Arrested Development.
Ken also makes some interesting observations regarding censorship and editorializing on the DVS track, but that’s probably a topic for another post on another blog.
At any rate, if you’re interested in hearing what the DVS track for The Simpsons sounds like, Ken has posted an entire episode available for download.
That’s really interesting. I’d never heard of DVS before, but it shows once again that most of us don’t really consider accessibility issues in our everyday lives.
And for the record, there are many times when I actually do need my TiVo to keep up with all the little extras in Simpsons episodes.
A great example of how accessibility really accomodates a much bigger audience than the particular ‘handicap’ being targetted. Yes, blind people can now enjoy the show on TV. This is a very good thing. But so too can everyone commuting to work listening to the show on their iPod. This is a great thing in terms of pure numbers.