Narrative Television Network
Through research, Stovall and Harper learned that there are 13 million people in the United States who have visual impairments severe enough to limit their enjoyment of movies and television programming. They began to develop a plan to make programs accessible to visually impaired people by adding the voice of a narrator describing the visual elements of the story. Even though they knew nothing about the technology it would require to accomplish such a task, they began working with borrowed equipment to produce the first few narrative soundtracks. Stovall and Harper then planned to add the narrative soundtracks to the existing movie audio. Experts in the television industry told them their plan would never work, but unfailing in their tenacity, they eventually found someone who would help them try, and the videos came together just as they had expected. Less than one year later, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded NTN with an Emmy for technology that has expanded the use of television.