National Public Radio (NPR) and Harris Corp., a major supplier of broadcasting equipment, as well as a new research center at
This kind of text-based broadcasts would work just as digital broadcasting — known as HD Radio technology, which allows broadcasters to split their signal into multiple transmissions. Some stations use the extra capacity to broadcast additional music or talk radio channels, which can be heard on HD Radio receivers. The new scrolling-text service would also use this extra capacity, but instead of broadcasting music it would send out streams of data that would be converted to scrolling text by the receivers and then displayed on the screen.
The group eventually hopes to find software to translate speech into written text and automate the service and reduce the cost to provide it so a wider variety of radio stations can offer it. NPR and its partners are also developing new technologies to make programming more accessible to deaf and blind people. They are working on making radios able to provide audio signal for the blind and visually impaired that would indicate what frequency the radio is tuned to, among other functions, and giving greater access to services such as InTouch Networks, which provides broadcasts and online audio feeds of volunteers reading from newspapers and magazines.
