New Media Helps Visually Impaired Hear Old Media

With the Assistive Media site, David Erdody is using the Internet and
RealAudio to make magazine articles available in audio form so that people
with visual impairments have access to a wider range of media. 

Copyright - 1998 The New York Times Company
By Jeri Clausing


The World Wide Web, as a rule, can be a very unfriendly place for the
disabled. But there are exceptions to every rule, and David Erdody's Web site
is one of those cases.  

With his Assistive Media site, http://www.AssistiveMedia.org/ Erdody is using
the Internet and RealAudio technology to make magazine articles available in
audio form so that people with visual impairments have access to a wider
range of media.  

Though the operation is still fairly small, and almost entirely volunteer, it
is getting rave reviews from around the world.  

"A valuable and exciting tool to read articles which I would not normally
come across," Richard Zapata, a blind massage therapist from Phoenix, wrote
in an e-mail to Erdody. "I very much thank you for the effort expelled in
putting this site together." 

"I really hope that this is only the first of many sites of its kind on the
Net," Zapata said in an e-mail interview. "I await the day when most, if not
all, magazines and newspapers are placed on the Internet." 

Erdody, a 33-year-old software consultant from Ann Arbor, Mich., started the
site earlier this year. It features articles from magazines like The New
Yorker and Wired. He is slowly expanding the network and hopes to also add
some children's literature.  

"There is so much that can be done. There is so much that is not available,"
he said.  

The idea started, Erdody said, while he was in college studying education
technology and used to listen to books on audio cassettes during his commute.  

His father has diabetes and faces the possibility of someday losing his
sight, so Erdody said he started paying attention to what was and wasn't
available on cassette.  

"Let's just say we sighted people have a much larger choice," he said. "I was
told by one library administrator that only 3 percent of the published works
in the U.S. are made into an alternative format for the handicapped. So began
a venture into what would become Assistive Media." 

Erdody formed a non-profit organization and initially distributed audio
readings of magazine articles on cassette. Then he became familiar with the
Internet and RealAudio technology, which allows anyone with a powerful enough
computer and speakers to listen to audio files posted on the Web. Visitors
can download the free RealAudio player directly from Erdody's site, then play
the recordings on their computer.  

"I thought, this is too good to be true. I could put one copy on the server
and have everybody access it," he said.  

About four months ago he got the Web site up and running, and has since heard
from people as far away as Australia and New Zealand. The user log in
mid-June was over 17,000, Erdody said.  

"It's really wonderful that little old me is able to provide such access
through this Web site," Erdody said.  

Besides readers, Erdody said he has had great feedback from the magazines he
is recording articles from. "It's a wonderful thing you're doing," wrote John
Perry Barlow of Wired Magazine. " This is one of the things the Net is for." 

Zapata, who has been blind since age 10, says it's not only the audio feature
that is attractive about the site, but also the site's low-graphics format --
which is friendly to the technology used by people with visual impairments to
read Web pages.  

"Altogether too many Web pages are designed with graphics in mind, not text,"
Zapata said. "It is for that reason, I feel that Assistive Media with its
text-based site serves an important function.  

"Although many of the graphics may be pretty and pleasing to the eye, they
are difficult to navigate with a screen reader, which is what I have to use." 

Erdody said his venture is volunteer and personally financed, although he is
starting to receive donations.  

Apple Computer donated a computer and the local Lions Club has given him some
financing. But for now he does much of the reading himself, and relies on
volunteers for help.  

"What I would like to do is set this up like public television where I can
offer the service for free without commercials and have it funded by the
private sector," he said.  

"I'd really like to do this for a living."  

