COAT International Friend RNIB Instrumental in Creation of First Accessible Set Top Box

February 1, 2010: COAT is delighted to learn that International Friend Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in U.K. was instrumental in developing the first accessible set-top box. A collaborative effort by British firm Ocean Blue Software, ST Microelectronics, TW Electronics and RNIB has led to development of the world’s first ‘talking’ digital set-top box, called the Chatterbox.

Of great benefit to people with vision and other disabilities, the Chatterbox has Text-to-Speech (TTS) capacity for some features. There are voice outputs when a channel is changed, when the title of the new program is turned on, announcement of the program's duration, and whether it has captions or audio description. The Chatterbox is expected to go on sale in the UK soon. Ocean Blue is currently looking for a partner to bring it to the US market.

A demonstration video -- not captioned, unfortunately -- is available for viewing on the Ocean Blue website (requires registration to view).

COAT is pleased with this demonstration of the feasibility of a provision found in Section 201 of H.R. 3101 and wonders what companies in the U.S. will step up to the plate and follow suit?

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