Post-eclipse it seems like most people talked about their visual experience on April 8th. However, across the country, many people experienced the eclipse through a sonification or a conversion of the light of the sun into sound.
WBFO Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins visited Buffalo State on Eclipse Day to hear how they used a LightSound device to make the eclipse accessible. Watkins speaks with Dr. Jen Connelly, a disabled astronomer and the associate director of Buffalo State’s planetarium about not only how they made this happen, but why they need more resources like this. Meanwhile, WBFO Reporter Alex Simone took the device with him to a park in Erie County to capture a recording.
PLAIN LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION: On Monday, April 8th, the moon and sun crossed paths, causing a solar eclipse. Some areas only saw the moon block some of the sun, but Western New York and Southern Ontario saw the moon fully block the sun, called a total solar eclipse. The earth didn't get the light from the sun in the same way it usually does, and nature sounded and looked different while the moon blocked the sun.
For people who are blind or have vision disabilities, the LightSound device was created to turn the light from the sun into sound. As the moon and sun crossed paths, less light reached earth. When the device has a lot of light coming in, it sounds like a dull tone. But as it got darker outside, the device became a rapid clicking noise, until totality was reached, where the device almost goes silent, aside from an ocassional click, because it is so dark outside.
On this week's Disabilities Beat segment, we hear a recording of the LightSound, which was recorded by WBFO's Alex Simone. WBFO's Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins also visits Buffalo State on Eclipse Day, where they used three LightSound devices. Emyle speaks with Dr. Jen Connelly, a disabled astronomer and the associate director of Buffalo State’s planetarium. Jen explains how the LightSound works and why resources like the LightSound are important. Emyle also speaks to two people who listened to the LightSound during totality to hear what it was like for them.
Listen to Western New York reach totality through the LightSound Device, as recorded by WBFO's Alex Simone
WBFO’s Alex Simone utilized a LightSound device, which converts light into data, and then data into sound, to record the total solar eclipse over Western New York on April 8, 2024. The LightSound device was created to make eclipses accessible to people who are blind or have other vision disabilities. If you scroll through the video and play at different points, you will notice how a steady tone turns into more rapid clicking, until it becomes a slow click and silence at totality.
TRANSCRIPT:
Emyle Watkins: Hi, I'm Emyle Watkins and this is the WBFO Disabilities Beat.
[Introduction music fades to a low tone]
Emyle Watkins: Okay, wait... bear with me.
[Clicking noise begins]
Emyle Watkins: Your radio is not broken. What you're hearing is actually a tool of accessibility.
Do you hear how the clicking is getting further and further apart? That's because the light outside was slowly going away.
That's right. You're actually listening to a recording of the April 8th, 2024 total solar eclipse in Erie County.
Emyle Watkins: This sound was created by a device called the LightSound which converts the amount of light it takes in from the sun into data and then into sound. This device is meant to help people with vision disabilities hear the progression of the eclipse.
Locations across the country, including here in Western New York, utilized this device which is provided for free through Harvard's LightSound project.
The recording you just heard was done by WBFO's Alex Simone, but one public location that utilized three of these devices was Buffalo State.
After the eclipse, I caught up with Dr. Jen Connelly, a disabled astronomer who serves as the associate director of the university's planetarium. She walked me through how they made the eclipse accessible to Eclipse Fest attendees.
Dr. Jen Connelly: Sure. So, we have several LightSounds. Some are just hooked to speakers so people could experience the change in sound as the light was changing. We also have something that actually takes the measurements of the light changes and records those, and, for us, we have it set up so there's a live graph here. And this graph was fun to watch throughout, not just at totality, because every time we got a peek in the clouds we got an extra boost in our sensor, we get a little more from the detector. So, that is going to be, all the data that we take here will be sent on and along the path of totality there were many of these setups, and so the people at Harvard who were able to develop this technology and then share it with us, will combine all the data and will learn more and more about what's happening to the light as it's traveling along the eclipse path.
Emyle Watkins: And I know you also had tactile books. How did you get those?
Dr. Jen Connelly: Yeah, thankfully, NASA was kind enough to send us some tactile books, both of the eclipse path and also some on the Moon. Those are a little harder to get and I hope in the future it will be easier to distribute those, but at least we were able to get that for this particular event.
Emyle Watkins: Through my reporting, it seems like getting some of these materials, while they're free, there's not a lot of them.
Dr. Jen Connelly: Yes.
Emyle Watkins: What needs to change to make future eclipses more accessible to people and to have more resources like this?
Dr. Jen Connelly: I think the first thing is awareness. I think there's a lot of, "Oh, well, there's not a need for this, okay? So the people who are blind or partially sighted, this is just not for them." And that's slowly changing, but I would like to see a big jump in that. This is a start, and I think it's always... Of course, I'm an astronomer, I'm going to say fund NASA, but a lot of times people think NASA is just big space missions and sending probes elsewhere. But a lot of what NASA does too, is provide these educational materials to us and have experts who know both sides of it, both the science of it and also, the accessibility side of it too. And so that, I think, really needs to be invested in moving forward.
Emyle Watkins: I also got to chat with Andrea Gustafson and John Deyoung who watched the eclipse while listening to Buffalo State's LightSound. Gustafson works for the university and was running the accommodations table for the eclipse, and Deyoung was visiting Buffalo with his family.
Emyle Watkins: You guys were both staying next to the LightSound device. Have you ever seen one of these devices before or heard of it before this event?
Andrea Gustafson: Before this event? No. I was absolutely ecstatic to hear that something like this existed for our students and our further community that exists here at Buffalo State and beyond, that have visual challenges or who are completely blind, to be able to aurally and hear the solar eclipse as it's going on, to be able to hear a tonal difference changing, and complete totality was absolute quiet. It was great. Not only was it quiet for everybody who could see visually, but it was completely quiet for totality for us using the LightSound as well. It was amazing.
John Deyoung: I had never heard of it and, being effectively abled, I'm ashamed to admit I hadn't even considered it. And as soon as I saw the device it was an obvious oversight on my part. It was clear that I had missed something obvious. I'm really glad that it exists, and it was really fascinating just to hear it change both with the clouds and with the eclipse itself. It was very, very cool.
Emyle Watkins: Did anything about it surprise you or change your perspective at all?
Andrea Gustafson: I don't think so. I think I was just glad to have them considering we've had such an overcast day today. It allowed us to experience the eclipse on a whole new level that I didn't think was going to be possible. But we got to see the eclipse in a whole new way because we didn't get to see with our eyes a whole lot of the eclipse because of the clouds, but we still got to partake in the event and experience the eclipse because we had our LightSound boxes with us today. We were lucky enough to have three of them so we got them in three different ways.
John Deyoung: For me, the experience was entirely novel, and I really can't speak to the LightSound itself because I was mostly just thinking about what this would've been like for all of our ancestors who've experienced something like this in the past. And it was a really interesting, sort of emotional connection to people I've never met, never would meet, but to know that we've all experienced the same thing in very, very different ways was really, really interesting. And I knew that this was going to be an interesting experience, and I had no idea what to prepare for, even though I knew exactly what was going to happen. It's really fascinating.
Emyle Watkins: Why is providing something like this important not just for the people who need it as an accessibility need, but also as an education tool and as an inclusion tool?
Andrea Gustafson: Literally because of that, it's educational and it's inclusive. So, we don't want to necessarily go into an event assuming that we know the type of person that's going to be at a particular event. It's the same as when somebody hands you a microphone and you go, "Oh, I don't need it. I have a very loud voice." Oh, yes, you do need it. There may be people out in the audience who are deaf or aurally challenged and are using a listening aid device, and they need it, and they shouldn't have to raise their hand and go, "Excuse me, I have a handicap. I have a disability. I have an access issue." Whichever way, or for whatever content they're from, whatever context that they like to use, whatever verbiage they use, they shouldn't have to raise their hand and identify themselves every single time. And that's the only way we're ever going to make an inclusive environment, is to continue to educate people so that they just make that universal design occur so that we don't have to worry about who's out in the audience, we just automatically do it and everybody's involved.
Emyle Watkins: To hear WBFO's full LightSound recording, learn more about the eclipse, view a transcript, plain language description, and more, visit our website at wbfo.org. I'm Emyle Watkins. Thanks for listening.
