Improving Tornado Alerts for People with Hearing and Vision Impairments

December 2017 - Drs. Jason Senkbeil and Darrin Griffin from the University of Alabama have received a grant of over $250,000 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct research on improving tornado warnings for people who have vision or hearing impairments. People with disabilities rely on the accessibility if emergency alerts to be informed during a crisis. However, many alerts are not accessible to people's specific needs. Dr. Darrin Griffin, a UA Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, said, “As a society, our goal is to become better, to achieve progress. To meet people’s civil rights, you have to understand them. You have to understand their culture, their communication and their psychology. I like doing research on Deaf people because it lets us see how the brain adapts when the auditory channel is not available.” The grant will enable this team to build and test a system whereby people that are deaf can view a local weather broadcast in a split-screen format. Half of the screen will show a meteorologist and the other half will show an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter.

 

The team believes their tornado model could be expanded to include other emergency situations and could be adapted to a variety of alert forms such as text, emails, or breaking news reports. Dr. Jason Senkbeil, UA Associate Professor of Geography, said, “The tornado warning scenarios and technology we plan to test and implement will hopefully help us understand how to improve risk communication for people who are Deaf and Deaf-Blind. In the process, what we learn will most likely improve tornado warning communication for everyone.”

 

By examining how officials and emergency responders can more effectively communicate with people with disabilities, the team believes their work could be expanded to include people from multiple backgrounds and need requirements. Drs. Senkbeil and Griffin hope the first phase of their research leads to more grants to continue studying how to improve emergency alerts and promote communication in crisis situations for people of all disability status. Source: Global Accessibility News.