CALL THE NUMBER ON YOUR SCREEN

When I’m watching TV with sighted friends and family members, I have a tendency to change the channel whenever the commercials come on. Why? Well, my biggest pet peeve as a visually impaired TV viewer is hearing such phrases on TV commercials and infomercials as “Call the number on your screen!” or “Visit the website on your screen!” instead of them verbally announcing the number or the website. Fine if you want to display them, that’s all fine and dandy with me. But for those of us who are totally blind and partially sighted, it’s not in the least bit helpful, especially if there’s a product or service we’re particularly interested in. I was watching TeleLatino last week with my grandmother, and they were advertising a CD that I was interested in purchasing. And of course, to order it, you had to “call the number on your screen”, but of course before my grandma could read me the number it had already disappeared! Would’ve made it so much simpler for me if they’d announced the number, then I could have jotted it down in my phone list. I am under the impression that TV advertising companies seem to think that people with visual impairments don’t watch TV. I’m gonna tell you right here and now that there are tons of us who listen to the TV, of course that’s where our auditory skills and our imagination (or “mind’s eye” if you will) come in. Which leaves us with the question of how we could clear up this little misunderstanding: I was reading a random blog a few months ago (unfortunately I am no longer able to locate it), in which the visually impaired author also mentions this topic, and her suggestion was to call the TV station and ask them to give you the numbers and websites in such commercials. Her theory was that if these companies are advertising on the station then the station would be able to give you the numbers and websites. I’ve never tried it, but I think it would be interesting to see the results. Or perhaps it should be a standard regulation that all phone numbers and websites be verbally announced as well as displayed on the screen. There’s closed captioning for the hearing impaired, so quite frankly I don’t see why they can’t make TV more user friendly towards people with visual impairments. Or, even better, they need to start doing what they do in radio commercials: announce the number a million times, that way, not only will we have access to it, but we’ll be likely not to forget it! It’d be interesting to hear your views on this.