Oswego County is offering a different type of eclipse experience, making the event more accessible for those with vision impairments.
When planning for the solar eclipse, Oswego County wanted everyone to be able to experience the once-in-a-lifetime event, including those who are blind or have low vision. Tourism & Public Information Social Media Specialist Jen Longley said county planners had to find an answer.
“You know, obviously an eclipse is something that, you know, like this is a really cool thing to see, but what about the people who can't see it?” Longley said.
That is where the LightSound Project comes in.
The LightSound Project has developed a device designed as a tool for the Blind and Low Vision (BLV) community to experience a solar eclipse with sound. Allyson Bieryla is an astronomer with Harvard University and is the principal investigator for the LightSount Project, she said the device in a nutshell, just converts light into sound through a process called “sonification.”
“So the different ranges of brightness are assigned to different instruments,” Bieryla said. “So we mapped the bright light, bright like a bright sunny day to like a flute sound, because it's kind of like a bright instrument, if you will. And then the midrange goes to like a clarinet sound, and then it goes to like a low clicking during like, you know, if you're in indoor lighting or during totality.”
The LightSound Project began back in 2017 with a limited number of devices and resources. Bieryla said today’s operation looks much different.
“For this eclipse we have, we built 900, which is crazy to think about how much it's grown,” Bieryla said. “But it's really the community that drives us and like the feedback we're getting, you know, we have so many requests, over 2500 requests. It's kind of a bit overwhelming because we just don't have as many devices as we wish.”
Still, according to Longley, Oswego County is one of the only places New Yorkers will be able to hear the eclipse.
“We're one of only three places in New York State that has one of these,” Longley said. “So to be able to offer that to the, you know, visually impaired population, it's something I'm very proud of right now.”
The county plans to stream the sound from a LightSound device online during the eclipse.
