Digital Radio
EICTA Manufacturers' Meeting - Summary of Presentation
Date: 06/12/2007
Venue: Brussels
Article
Thank you Francesco, and I particularly appreciate your statement that this is the beginning of a new phase in EICTA's interest in accessibility such that you will not launch any new major issue without considering the accessibility component from the outset.
It is very important that we learn from the recent experience in discussing the accessibility of digital television. Certainly from the perspective people like me, seeking accessibility features, and people like you who have brand values to protect, the public will take much less kindly to radio that is inaccessible to blind people than to television. But at least in this area we have a much more powerful lever in the short term, even though I have no doubt that we will see televisions in cars in the long-term. Car drivers are very similar to blind people in their ICT accessibility requirements and we know that, for example, in the UK, that 60% of broadcasting hours are consumed in cars; so DAB is not going to be a success if it is not a success in cars.
Over the past few years there has been a general trend away from manually operated consumer electronics towards automated tuning with screen displays (you only have to look at the Sony ICF7600 series and the new Sony DAB Digital Radio XDR-S50; and the use of touch screens (the Apple iPhone). Incidentally, it may seem counter intuitive to you but blind people do not perform well with touch screens which rely on good hand/eye co-ordination.
Of course I cannot at this moment speak for anybody else but from my experience it would seem there are five basic requirements in the accessibility of digital radio (which are so high level that they are, in effect, platform independent); these are ranked approximately in descending order of importance:
- Channel select: What do I want?
- Channel ID: What have I got?
- Screen read-out: What am I being told?
- Favourites: What do I like, either manually input or ranked according to user behaviour
- Talking back: What do I want to tell the system/broadcaster.
Question: What is your attitude to the Pure radio?
Answer: I think it came too soon, before there was DAB content that did not simply replicate analogue (this is dealt with in Ofcom's recent document on the future of radio ‘The Future of Radio, The next phase 22nd November 2007.) In any case, we would prefer the manufacturing standards and care of big players; the access technology sector is small, fragile and highly priced.