Residents and visitors from around the world came to the Northeast Monday to see the total solar eclipse. But others experienced the afternoon in novel ways.
Staff at the United Cerebral Palsy of Western Massachusetts organized a solar eclipse party in Pittsfield for the Sight Impaired, Blind and Sighted Community. Under a bright but hazy, cloud-covered sky, about 100 people gathered outside the Clock Tower building.
Aiming to make the event as accessible as possible, UCP made available an array of eclipse viewing glasses, lenses, and handmade box pinhole projectors — plus a unique tool for hearing the eclipse.
Developed by a small team of astronomers and engineers at Harvard, the LIGHTSOUND device uses a process called sonification to covert energy from varying intensities of light to produce tonal sounds.
“So, what this does is it uses a light sensor and that sonification technique, and as the light gets dimmer and dimmer.. so, a bright light will do a flute sound, medium light will do a clarinet noise and then once we get to that really dark part, which we're at now, it'll be very deep, slow, and we might even hear some clicking," explained Iris Long, Director of the Assistive Technology Regional Center at UCP. "Depending on if we're lucky enough to get a lot of totality, and then it'll do the opposite once it's not eclipsing back.”
Originally designed for the 2017 solar eclipse with just three devices in use, Harvard’s LIGHTSOUND team worked to produce and distribute close to 900 devices this time, as well as hosting workshops for community groups to build their own kits. Media coverage of the project caught the attention of Liz Irwin, Assistant Manager of Fundraising and Communications at UCP.
“I listened to WAMC every morning, and I listened to NPR, and you guys read the story about three weeks ago on the Harvard Smithsonian light sound device," Irwin said. "And I came running into work and said, ‘Oh, we need one of these. We need one right now’, and Iris wrote to them and it kind of fell into place after that.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 764,000 people in the U.S. are living with at least one symptom of cerebral palsy. In Massachusetts, about 25 percent of adults has a disability of some type. John Ostellino, a sight impaired eclipse reveler from Pittsfield, was grateful for the thoughtful gathering.
“Well, I was glad to, to be a part of it," Ostellino said. "I'm glad that my friend here was nice enough to bring me down to it. Just to experience like, what the chatter what people are talking about and the enthusiasm and a thing other thing, I kind of have a better understanding of what the media has been trying to tell us.”
By his side was Ostellino’s sighted, disabled friend Sarah Bach.
“Disability has been underground for so long," Bach said. "We have been put at the back of the room, you know, at the bottom of the ramp, and the back of the bus kind of thing. And I think this is a time now for disabled people, to make everything universally accessible moving forward for the next generations. So they don't have the same struggles.”
The LIGHTSOUND device was just one of many featured assistive technologies on display. UCP Staff members Jen Valente and Ryan O’Neill presided over a selection of toys and tools, part of the Assistive Technology Regional Center’s lending library.
“People can come in if they need, like this helps identify labels," Valente said. "So, for somebody who's visually impaired, they can run the pen across this label and it'll read it to them. These are like just simple switches like a cause-and-effect button. So, if I push this these bubbles come out. So little things from low tech to high tec. All these little animals, people love these guys! These are companion pets. Are they on Ryan? I don't think they're on. So, for people who can't have.. it's like a comfort thing. Those are very popular. We loan those out a lot. So basically, anything somebody needs it could be an adaptive spoon. It could be something to help them read something to help them here. We have all that.”
“Why don't you come up to our office sometime and see all of the fun toys, because this is only a teeny, teeny, teeny selection," said O'Neill.
The LIGHTSOUND device will remain in the ATRC lending library and is available for use by the public.
