What does all this DVS fluff have to do with Visually Impaired Computer
Users?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Zielinski" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 4:50 AM
Subject: Full chronological transcript of blind leader's sparring over DVS


> This has been posted to various lists in individual segments.  Here it is
> in full.
>
> Steve
>
> ----- Forwarded Message Follows -----
>
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: DVS question
>
>
> April 10, 2001
>
> Mr. Reagan Lynch
>
> Dear Reagan:
> Recently, you sent me the following email letter:
>
> Hello,
> I have recently been made aware that you have joined the NAB, NCTA and
MPAA in a suit to prevent FCC DVS rules from going into effect.  I find this
troublesome. Mainly do to the fact that it is you, the NFB, that has
underwritten the past inaugurals for DVS on PBS.
>
> So in light of that let me make sure I have this right.  You are fighting
against something you support?  So then you would be filing suit against
your own beliefs.
>
> I would appreciate any response.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Reagan D. Lynch
>
>
> [Text below by Marc Maurer, President, National Federation of the Blind]
>
> This will respond to the questions you raise about the descriptive video
argument, which is being so badly misrepresented on the Internet.
>
> The National Federation of the Blind is supporting a policy that was
adopted and subsequently reaffirmed after thorough discussion at our
National Conventions.  This policy seeks to advance freedom of expression
and equal access to information.
>
> Let me begin by observing that the National Federation of the Blind is
sometimes controversial (from the point of view of the less well-informed);
it is sometimes determined (those who do not like the positions we take
would say mule-headed); but it is never foolish.  We do not fight things we
support.
>
> There are those who say the NFB has, with venality aforethought, joined
the motion picture magnets to fight the blind.  Sometimes, those painting
this dire picture allege or suggest that the Federation has taken this mangy
position with the prospect of gain in mind--financial reward.  Those making
such charges either do not have all the facts, or are willingly
misrepresenting the truth.  They may think the Federation has as little
principle as they do.
>
> As you point out in your email, the Federation has supported descriptive
video in the past, both politically and financially.  The organization has
never adopted a policy opposing this service and has encouraged its
development and promulgation.  Every year at the Convention, we provide
space and time for the presentation of audio-described movies, and we print
information about the presentation in the formal Convention Agenda.
Furthermore, we have supported the service in other ways.
>
> The policy of the Federation is that we believe matters of commercial
interest and matters of information which are presented visually for the
public at large, should be provided in audible form.  However, we do not
believe that verbal descriptions of entertainment should be mandated by law.
>
> The Motion Picture Association is apparently arguing that verbal
descriptions of visual material (regardless of its importance or purpose)
cannot be required because to do so would violate the First Amendment. We
believe that verbal descriptions are sometimes of sufficient importance that
they must be required to give equal access to information for the blind.
However, we do not believe everything that is visual must be described.  We
think access to information is essential as a matter of civil rights, but
access to entertainment Is not . We also believe that there should be room
for freedom of expression.
>
> It is an oft-repeated claim that a picture is worth a thousand words.  If
this is so, descriptive video cannot hope to provide more than a tiny
fraction of that which is presented visually.  Consequently, we in the NFB
make a distinction between straight information and artistic presentation.
Information such as telephone numbers, names of individuals, warnings about
impending bad weather, and the like should be verbalized.  We think the law
should require this.  Other presentations, which are artistic in character,
should be verbalized if we can persuade the artistic presenters to do it.
We believe that artists should have freedom to express themselves.
>
> We believe it is not reasonable to demand that Leonardo Da Vinci make an
attempt to describe the Mona Lisa so that blind people can get the same
impression that sighted people do.  Visual art is by its nature visual.  To
describe it is good, but the law should not demand it.
>
> For an analogy, consider the situation of the deaf.  To provide a visual
description of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with sufficient detail to give a
deaf person the same impression that a hearing person would get would be an
impossibility.  It would be possible, perhaps, to take the sound of the
Fifth Symphony, run it through a synthesizer, and display it as patterns of
light on a video screen.  However, the essence of the experience is altered.
To demand that an orchestra go to the trouble and expense of displaying the
Fifth Symphony visually is unreasonable.
>
> We believe that videos or movies are presentations of artistic talent.
> We believe it is highly desirable to describe them so that the blind,
along with the sighted, may enjoy them.  However, we think freedom of
expression should permit the artist (if the artist is particularly
boneheaded) to leave the description out.  In other words, we do not think
artistic expression should be dictated by law.
>
> As you can tell, the National Federation of the Blind is considerably more
sophisticated than those who have been telling the public that we don't know
what we are doing. Our thousands of members in Convention assembled
discussed the position the Federation should take and voted to adopt our
current policy more than once.  We took the position we have because we
recognize that for every accommodation demanded, a price will necessarily be
paid in money, in acceptance of the blind in greater society, in the
influence blind people can have, and in good will.  A balance must be
maintained which gives the blind what we need for equal access without
disadvantages that outweigh it.
>
> We at the National Federation of the Blind have adopted our policy with
this in mind.  We have filed a lawsuit in Federal Court to demand that
essential information be provided verbally.  Our suit also demands that the
FCC not misapply the law by saying that entertainment cannot exist unless it
is described.  It begins with the movie theater, moves on to the night club,
becomes a part of little league baseball, and expands to all of the millions
of visual displays that people watch with such enjoyment.
>
> It is important to include blind people in all activities of society.  It
is equally important to do so in a way that provides blind people with the
characteristics that make acceptance and integration possible.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Marc Maurer, President
> NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
>
> MM/anw
>
>
>  ----- Forwarded Reply Follows -----
>
> Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 09:40:30 -0700
> To: [log in to unmask]
> From: Charles Crawford <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Response to Maurer defense
>
>
> [Text below by Charles Crawford, Executive Director, American Council of
the Blind]
>
> Reagan,
> Thanks for sharing Marc Maurer's defense of the NFB position with respect
to video description and their law suit to roll back the right we gained
from the FCC ruling that would provide us with an initial amount of it next
year.  I read the Maurer defense a number of times to make sure that I fully
understood it.  Here is my response.
>
> After telling us that they have been badly misrepresented,
> they are stubborn but not foolish, and that they really are right since
their critics are misinformed, he really gets down to their thinking.
>
> As best I can tell, they are saying that there is a balance
> to be preserved between having rights honored and making sure we don't end
up with more negative results than the positive benefits to be derived from
entertainment oriented description.
> The rest was basic propaganda aimed at convincing us that we should; 1)
reject the rule because of the extreme examples he offered, 2) that artists
offering a product for public consumption have a right to deny part of the
public with substantive access to that product, and that 3) the Federation
is acting as the champion of access to information by going to court to
force our rights to get information rather than entertainment.
>
> Granted that the NFB has a right to form a world view that transcends
parochial blindness interests to a place of balanced rights and
responsibilities that in their view best advantage us; they must still be
held accountable for; A) having drawn substantive conclusions of negative
results purely from speculation, B) having arrogated our choices to their
philosophy through a naked attempt to force their views on the world by
legal action, and C) their questionable pursuit of the esoteric rights of
artists who certainly have many more times the resources of NFB to defend
their own position.  These are serious issues and offenses that must be
explored to demonstrate the true and counter-productive conduct we are being
forced to witness.
>
>
> A: Conclusions based on speculation.
>
> While it can hardly be imagined that "thousands" of Federationists
gathered and twice on their own came to the conclusion that lawfully
mandating video description would cause serious harm to our community;
someone or some group succeeded in getting the organization to take this
fanciful stance.  More than likely, it was some misapplication of basic NFB
do it yourself philosophy that guided any discussions.  the speculation that
asking for video description with respect especially to entertainment would
clearly result in both a lesser view of blind people as helpless by society
and become an internalized negative self view by individual blind people
must have been the predicted disaster that would occur if folks acted upon
their desires to have it.  If this were the case and I suspect that it was;
nothing of the sort could have been predicted in the real world.  the
opposite is true.
>
> Access to entertainment television with video description is more of a
rightful result of our existence and labor in civilized society rather than
some special accommodation that must be made to entitlement driven blind
people.  If TV offers its programming for the public to watch then what
special status does the sighted public have to watch it?  Only one.  They
own a television.  So do we.  In fact, there is no distinction between the
sighted public and ourselves when it comes to being members of that same
public as consumers of products offered through commercials.  What right
therefore do those who supply the programming have to discriminate against
viewers when the very conveyance for the transmission of that programming is
the public airwaves.
>
> Will sighted people watching and seeing a logo for video description
immediately conclude that they are being denied anything at all, or that
blind people are pathetic objects of forced charity?  Will blind people be
reinforced to see ourselves as drains upon society and only able to enjoy
our lives at the price of subjugation to that status?  If the federation
thinks that, then maybe they might want to reconsider the benefits of their
worrying about the philosophical implications of every occurrence around
them.
>
>
> B: Their court action to rescind mandated video description.
>
> Now turning to the law suit, we must ask why the Federation found it so
critically necessary to go to court?  Clearly they must have determined that
they were so undoubtedly correct, the anticipated harm to the blind so
terrifying, and that there was no other remedy than for them to attack video
description in the courts.
>
> The issue that defies credibility with the law suit is that the Federation
must have unilaterally concluded; that the widespread backing for video
description in the blindness community was simply not enough to; override
their speculation on the negative effects of mandated video description on
the blindness community, their need to defend the transitory first amendment
rights of visual artists and to overcome their own self-congratulatory
conclusions that they may be mule-headed but never foolish.  Are these
reasons sufficiently compelling to launch a law suit aimed directly at
taking away an important right that was earned through 15 years of hard work
and advocacy by ACB and numerous other activists within our community?
Apparently they believe so.
>
> The legal test of opposing a governmental agency rule is basically
substantial harm.  What harm?  Neither their court complaint papers or
Marc's defense demonstrate anything near the kind of harm ACB would have had
to show when we considered legal action in the matter of the Manual of
Uniform traffic Devices last Christmas.  In that case, we were confronted
with an agency issuing prejudicial language that was not in the proposed
rule which would have had the effect of placing blind people's lives at
risk.  Fortunately, we did not have to move forward due to the common
outrage that even traffic engineers shared with us over the offensive
language.  that was a far higher standard than anything Marc proposed or
inferred in his defense of the NFB actions in this video description case.
>
>
> C:  Defense of artistic freedom.
>
> Finally in his written defense, he offers the notion of the Federation
standing up for the right of artists to offer there art without the
government compelling them to use video description.  There are major
problems with this position.
>
> First there is the issue of whether the nature of the art is changed by
description.  When visual art is presented to sighted people without the
requirement of description because blind folks get it on a separate track,
then how is the art distorted to those who appreciate it from a visual
perspective?  Moreover, description is only description and not an altering
of the original product.  It can be argued that description may prejudice
the intent of the artist by reason of the conclusions or observer effect of
the describer, but there is no conspiracy out there by describers to alter
what is presented and clearly a description is necessary to provide
continuity and substance to many presentations and enhancement to others.
Ins short, so what?  There is nothing here more than esoteric ruminations
that make no substantive difference in the real world to the artists.
Rather the art is in fact delivered to more people than originally possible.
>
> Then of course there is the issue of the commercial nature of the product.
We are not talking about an artistic and secluded monk on a mountainside
creating pure visual beauty for art's sake.  This is entertainment
television and movies offered for mass consumption in exchange for the same
money possessed by blind and sighted customers alike.
>
> There is also the logical inconsistency of supporting video description
for blind people while maintaining that artists must not be mandated by
government to produce it.  The inconsistency arises from being more
concerned with the rights of artists than their own self-admitted support of
video description.  If it is specifically the governmental mandate that is
being opposed because NFB otherwise supports description; then how could the
Federation from its new libertarian perspective have actively campaigned and
supported the chilling of free choice for blind people to work in at
industrial settings for the blind which resulted from the RSA mandate to the
states?  In short, supporting governmental mandates when they take away
choice while opposing them when they provide it?
>
> Lastly on the artists issue; why do they need NFB or why should NFB decide
it so important to defend them?  there is no question that the entertainment
industry is awash with money and can afford its own expensive lawyers.
Would the Federation be more consistent with their mission to spend money on
direct issues of importance to blind people?  This is nonsense.  We are
forced to ask what is really going on here?
>
>
> In conclusion, the Maurer defense when purely seen within
> the isolation of the NFB context is a well written and convincing set of
arguments that evaporate when seen from the larger perspective and reality
of the issues.  they certainly are adequate to reassure Federationists who
have a need to cling to the organization that they were right all along and
anyone who disagrees is simply misinformed.  For these Federationists there
is little likelihood that anything would convince them otherwise.  For
others who care enough to think about it; perhaps there still is a chance
that they might make a difference in NFB's course of action.
>
> In any event, the truth remains clear; the Federation assault on video
description as a mandated FCC rule is ill advised, blatantly offensive to
the blind of this nation, deplorable as an action taken by a group holding
itself out as representing all of us and must be withdrawn to even begin any
dialog of redemption.
>
>
> --      charlie Crawford.
>
>
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