Frank Kunkle, SMPTEs director of marketing, explains how modern media technologies offer capabilities most people consider conveniences, but can be life-changing for others
By Contributor
Published: May 19, 2022
Frank Kunkle, SMPTE's director of marketing, explains how modern media technologies offer capabilities most people consider conveniences, but can be life-changing for others
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
If you were to meet Frank Kunkle, SMPTE director of marketing, for breakfast to talk about the Society's latest initiatives and standards work, it's unlikely you'd realise he is legally blind.
But if Kunkle found the route to the restaurant unfamiliar, he would have used the camera on his smartphone to identify street signs along the way. Earlier in the day, he would have relied on the amazing resolution on that same phone to take the correct prescription and trim his toenails. The night before, while streaming a show on TV, he might have attached something like a telescope to his eyeglasses to give his partner a break from reading the subtitles aloud.
An apology from Kunkle, who is arriving just a moment late due to misplaced eyeglasses, may seem natural so you're a bit confused when he instead asks to switch seats with you. But he's warm and charismatic, so you gladly listen as he explains that if you had stayed in the seat with the sunlight streaming into the caf from behind you, he'd be unable to see your facial features and expressions throughout your conversation.
Even when Kunkle wears glasses, his visual acuity falls into the legal blindness range; on his best days, an object that is 20 feet away would appear to be 100 feet away. But having been born with bilateral coloboma, Kunkle also experiences a restricted visual field and sensitivity to light. Like any person with a disability, he is familiar with manipulating his environment - often and quickly - sometimes using tools in ways that their inventors hadn't planned for in order to perform mundane yet essential tasks.
Thanks in large part to screens and moving images, Kunkle is able to live as close to a normal life as possible. This attracted him to the role at SMPTE several years ago. The opportunity to collaborate closely with SMPTE's members, who are the engineers and technologists working on advances in media, felt perfect to Kunkle. Even at the level of engineering requirements and standards, Kunkle has benefited greatly from the work of SMPTE's members throughout his life.
I am drawn to working in STEM fields, and media especially, because innovation in these areas can make life so much better for visually impaired people, says Kunkle. Modern media technology offers capabilities most people consider conveniences, but for someone like me, those conveniences can be life-changing.
Huge screens with powerful resolution and detail allow many people with low vision to see the world more clearly than they ever could with their own eyes. And Kunkle points to innovations such as an intelligent camera app that narrates the world around the user, and SMPTE's media-over-IP standards and requirements, which offer many options for delivering media to consumers in a way that works for them. Another bucket of tools, such as the browser extension Teleparty (formally called Netflix Party), created for general use is also proving immensely valuable to visually impaired users.
Kunkle explains that, being legally blind as a child, he experienced an extreme awareness of self. He recalls being just three years old and wanting to hide his impairment. For Kunkle and many others, that introspection came with having what the U.S. calls an Individualised Education Plan (IEP). While effective, the supports a young person would experience through their IEP invite that person from a very young age to compare their abilities to their peers.
It becomes overwhelming as the supports lead the person to articulate limitations their impairment creates and finally the simple task of verbalising (self-advocacy) the solutions that they will need to participate in society. Here's the challenge: the young, disabled person may have to imagine solutions that have never been seen before or they may lack the life experience to really understand their needs.
Over the years, Kunkle went to great lengths to seem like he was running with the pack. While he worked hard to make it look as though there was nothing going on for him, his life was in fact very different from that of most people around him.
I'd go to watch a movie with friends, but I couldn't see a damn thing on the screen. I'd awkwardly pretend I was following the plotline. Screens were so small even a few decades ago! says Kunkle. But these days I could use Teleparty to watch the same film with the time code synchronised - thank you, SMPTE! - on my own screen. I get to be exactly in the moment. What a different experience that is. And the same goes for playing collaborative, phone-based video games with friends. For so many visually impaired people, it's like, Finally, I can really do this.'
This value of participation - and, more recently, inclusion - has long been clear to Kunkle. So he is driven by a shocking reality that only 31.4 per cent of persons with disabilities in the U.S. ages 16-64 are employed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, while 72.5 per cent without disabilities that age range are employed.
Kunkle suggests that, at a minimum, most any person wants to participate in a society. So it is only natural that many conversations around inclusion of persons with disabilities deal with participation. What he feels may be missing in some of these conversations is the idea that visually impaired and other disabled people can and do give bac
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Frank Kunkle, SMPTEs director of marketing, explains how modern media technologies offer capabilities most people consider conveniences, but can be life-changing for others
