[accessibleimage] Re: articles Opera description and VirTouch

Hi Lisa and Listers,
In case you ever want to shorten a URL, such as the link address to the =
VirTouch artilce, you can copy it into your clipboard and then go to =
www.snipurl.com and snip it.  The VirTouch article's URL can be snipped to =
http://snipurl.com/6axm for future use.
Happy snipping!
- Judi
>>> fnugg@xxxxxxxxx 05/11/04 03:12AM >>>
Hi,

Two newspaper articles one about describing for Opera
and one about VirTouch.

I have included the text of the articles and links to
them.(Note:the link address to the VirTouch article is long)

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/05/09/bringing=
_drama_of_live_opera_to_the_blind/=20

http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enPage=3DBlankPage&enDisplay=3Dview&enD=
ispWhat=3Dobject&enDispWho=3DArticles%5El682&enZone=3DTechnology&enVersion=
=3D0&=20

Lisa

Bringing drama of live opera to the blind

Describer interprets for visually impaired
By Bridget Samburg, Globe Correspondent  |  May 9, 2004
Andrea Doane is waiting for the curtain to go up, reviewing
her lines, making last-minute
notations with her mechanical pencil. As the lights dim
inside the Shubert Theatre and the
opera begins, Doane starts talking.
On a recent Sunday, Doane is rehearsing for Tuesday's
performance by
the Boston Lyric Opera of Mozart's "Cos Fan Tutte," during
which she
will be a reader of the opera while another woman is the
describer. The two will work as a
team to describe and translate the Italian opera to visually
impaired audience members.

 Doane, who has worked as a describer since 1992, says this
is the first time she has tackled a
performance in another language. As such, she will act as
the interpreter for blind audience
members listening through headsets to her translations,
while sighted audience members read
the words on projections on both sides of the stage.

 "It is so powerful to me to be able to make something that
is accessible to me available to
others," says Doane, perched on a stool with a script and
microphone in front of her as she
peers out of a sound-proof box at the stage below.

A Brookline resident and first-grade teacher at Devotion
School, Doane says she usually
works as a describer on two or three performances, including
plays and musicals, in Boston
each year. Most of the shows in the city offer one or two
performances at which a describer is
available, according to Doane, who also trains others in the
art of live-theater description.
During this Sunday trial run, Doane drops the occasional
"Oops, that's wrong" or "That's not
right" as the opera goes on below. By Tuesday night she is
hoping to have all problems fixed.
Elizabeth Borg, who isn't at this rehearsal, will offer
descriptions of the set and action.

Doane has to do more than just read. She must time her words
with the cast's singing and
Borg's descriptions. She is careful not to add inflection or
emotion to the words, since she
says such additions don't happen when the words are
projected on the screens. With a bottle
of water and pack of gum next to her and throat lozenges in
her nearby bag, Doane is ready
to practice the performance.
 "The orchestra pit is four feet lower than the stage
floor," Doane says softly into the
 microphone, offering a detail that most sighted audience
members would take for granted. She
describes the "massive crystal chandelier" and the overall
scene inside the Shubert.
 Janice Mancini Del Sesto, general director of the Boston
Lyric Opera, says the performances
 for the blind have a special meaning for her. When she was
a child, she says, a family friend
who was blind would ask her to listen to music with her eyes
closed, to appreciate the
importance music held for the blind woman.

On Tuesday, some 20 seats will be reserved for the visually
impaired audience members.
 "Cos Fan Tutte" is the second opera that the company has
described. The company has
 partnered with the Wang Center for the Performing Arts and
the Cultural Access Consortium
to provide the live descriptions.

Mancini Del Sesto says she hopes all of the operas will
offer the blind community description
in the future. "This is the most comprehensive way of giving
them a flavor of what is going on
that they can't see," she says.
..
"A good performance is when the blindness community gasps or
laughs at the same time as
the rest of the audience," says Doane. That's when she knows
she's doing something right.=20






  Graphic breakthrough for the blind developed in Israel
  By ISRAEL21c staff   May 09, 2004


(text to picture of PC and VirTouch player)
  VirTouch's technology allows the blind
  to see through their fingertips elements
  like pictures, even photographs, maps,
  charts and tables, and flow charts -
  everyday things that are today off-limits
  for the blind.

  VirTouch Ltd.
                              =20
Amazing advancements for the visually impaired have
taken place over the last few years. Today, blind people
can do many of the same things sighted people can.=20

The primary reason: the power of the personal computer.=20

Arnold Roth, the CEO of VirTouch - an Israeli company
which specializes in computer technology for the blind and
visually-challenged - explains that today's PCs and the
Internet let blind people read just about any text they
want, but that there are still challenges ahead.=20

"Text and numbers are pretty largely accessible to blind
people who know Braille and are capable of working with
 computers. They can also hear it spoken by software,"
Roth told ISRAEL21c. "But when you look beyond the text,
that's when you run into problems - things like images,
 photographs, maps, charts and tables. There is no solution
for those elements other than printing them out using
some very expensive embossing equipment. It's not very
conducive to interactivity."=20

Last year, VirTouch launched a mouse-like device called the
VTPlayer that is novel, unique and patented - as well as
interactive, which opened the door to PC-based
entertainment and learning for blind and visually impaired
computer users. Now, building on the success of the
original device, VirTouch is launching a new class of
software for blind accessibility in the area of non-text
computer images that, according to Roth, will become as
revolutionary to the millions of blind Americans as Braille
was.=20
"What our new technology does is allow the blind to see
through their fingertips elements like pictures, even
photographs, maps, charts and tables, and flow charts -
everyday things that are today off-limits for the blind,"
said
Roth=20

It's quite a jump for a company that has focused until now
on software and games for blind children. Founded in the
mid-'90s, Virtouch is the brainchild of Dr. Roman Gouzman,
 a cognitive psychologist from the former Soviet Union.
Gouzman assembled a team of software and hardware
developers and actively sought input from the blind,
including many children.=20

"In VirTouch's early days, we came along with technology
that aimed to fill an entirely empty niche - entertainment
for blind children. After some missteps, we've developed a
device that addresses that need and does it very well,"
said Roth, adding that as the father of a blind child, he
feels a special affinity for VirTouch's products.=20
VTPlayer originated as the combination hardware/software
  product Virtouch developed as an excellent and unique
way for blind children to learn Braille and to have fun
while
acquiring important cognitive skills like orientation and
spatial relationships. Among its many highlights is the fact
that it allows a blind child to play side-by-side and at the
 same time on the same PC with a child (friend, sibling,
 parent, teacher) who is sighted.=20

 VirTouch introduced the child-oriented product at the ATIA
accessibility technologies expo in Orlando, FL in January
2003, and a European version with support for multiple
languages at the SightCity exhibition in Frankfurt during
May 2003. Bundled with five software applications and
several utilities, it retails for $695.=20

"When we displayed the VTPlayer at a show in California,
Stevie Wonder came by and sat down. And he wouldn't
leave. He was so taken with the product that he ended up
buying the display model," said Roth.=20
"Our breakthrough is partly engineering and partly
 psychology. The hardware - the mouse-like VTPlayer - gives
blind adults and children a tactile sense of what's
happening on the computer screen by stimulating their
finger tips. At the same time, smart software we have
created for Windows lets their sense of hearing as well as
their cognitive abilities fill in the gaps caused by the
limits
of their vision," Roth said.=20

VirTouch's tactile solution is silver-colored and a little
larger
than a regular computer mouse. It incorporates all the
 functions of a regular Windows mouse in addition to its
unique capabilities as a tactical, immersive, multimedia
 device. It has an optical sensor, four thumb-operated
buttons and two embedded tactile pads where the user's
 fingers rest. Each tactile pad consists of 16 small
vibrating
 pins. A standard USB (Universal Serial Bus) plug enables a
fuss-free connection to any PC.=20

The first generation of VTPlayer software consists of a
growing family of software applications for Windows, all
 very graphical and attractively designed, all with a spoken
(using actors) and musical sound track and all with inbuilt
 features that reflect the cognitive psychological focus
which
 VirTouch brings to the development of all its products.=20

Using the same basic hardware and software, Virtouch in
the last year has focused on extending its capabilities to
 make it a productivity tool that according to Roth "will be
no less important than a Braille display used by blind
people."=20

"The launch last year of the VTPlayer gave us a great
platform for experimenting. During the past nine months,
 we have tried to think outside the box and come up with
 tactile ways of giving blind people access to information
that has been useless to them until now - using a product
 that people thought was only for games," said Roth.=20

 "For instance, on the day Saddam Hussein was captured, I
 happened to be in the Pacific Northwest, meeting there
 with a blind entrepreneur. I wanted to show him what our
 technology could do. Our R&D team in Jerusalem worked
 through their morning (the overnight hours for us out
 west), creating web-pages that incorporated news-agency
 stories, photos and maps of the capture and made them
tactile. They posted these to a private location on our
website. By the time I sat down with the blind gentleman
 in the morning, I was able to say 'Let's first sit together
 and view something new.' He 'saw' tactile pictures of the
 Iraqi leader before and after his shave, along with spoken
and Braille text reports. His fingers explored a schematic
 diagram of the spider hole where the Iraqi leader was
 found, with spoken commentary being heard at the right
 moments. His surprise and undisguised excitement turned
the meeting into a great success."=20

 Besides the enjoyment blind people will get from being
 able to 'see' photographs and maps, there are very
 practical aspects to the VTPlayer's new capabilities.
According to Roth, personal mobility and navigation are key
issues for many blind people, and VirTouch is about to
launch a tactile interface for digital map information, or
geographical information systems (GIS).=20

 "Blind people can go to the same sites you or I visit on
the
 web and they will be able to use general-purpose maps
which were created for sighted people with no allowances
 made for the special needs of blind people. The blind can
 feel what's there and experience it in a tactile fashion,"
said Roth. "That's just what accessibility technology is
ideally supposed to do."=20

Another graphic challenge the VTPlayer tackles in the field
of art, where blind users can see the classic with the help
of Virtouch's tactile technology.=20

 "While it's early to say we have commercial relations,
we've
 been invited to consult to some important museums and
 galleries and the feedback is strong and positive.
 Unfortunately, many people regard the enjoyment of visual
 arts as 'nice to have' rather than 'must have'. But art is
    emblematic of a larger class of things that we are
enabling
 - making image content accessible to the blind. That's
 something we can feel proud about," said Roth.=20

 Roth estimates that the repackaged VTPlayer with its
 graphic technology will be available to U.S. consumers
 during the summer.=20

 "Today we sell a product that's entertainment. Tomorrow -
 which is really almost today - we are extending the same
 techniques and technology and making important and
 useful things accessible that are not currently accessible
to
 blind people. There's nothing else out there that lets you
 do this."

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