CEAC-2022-03-March

Indiana Dunes National Park’s Mount Baldy in Michigan City, Ind. The Indiana Dunes National Park partnered with audio description company UniDescription
to create an audio brochure that illustrates the park experience and geography for the sight impaired. (Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune via AP)
adding audio recordings to the park’s many wayside exhibits
and informational signage. Visitors can dial a phone number
to hear a recording of Rossi reading the signage. So far 10 of
the approximately 100 waysides have been completed.
When the park was approached by UniDescription, Butler
and Rossi thought the project was a great way to expand the
work they had already started.
First developed in 1967, the park brochure has shape-shifted
over the years, with the most recent update occurring in
2019 after Indiana Dunes became a National Park.
Rossi spent the last five summers staring at the front of
the brochure — upside down. From his usual perch at the
Indiana Dunes visitor center, Rossi spends much of his day
showing hikers the brochure’s map. Before starting the audio
project Rossi said he wasn’t sure if he had “ever even looked
at the back of the brochure.”
Adorned with vibrant photos of the park’s many habitats,
graphics showing the impact of the glaciers and sepia-toned
images of the park’s early days, the brochure is packed with
information. The team broke the brochure into 34 sections,
spanning the history of the park to its many unique biological
features.
Each recording includes a synopsis, which Butler said is the
“first glance of what you see” and an in-depth description.
The in-depth description is what happens “when you look at
the photo for more than 10 seconds. Then the details really
start coming out,” Rossi said.
“It has changed my perspective, now I really appreciate what
the park is all about,” Butler said. “Listening to it you go,
‘Wow, there is so much more going on,’ ... even if you are
not blind it is a great tool to have.”
Park rangers supplied painstaking detail for each image: the
precise number of yellow perch, the exact type of goldfinch.
Rossi hopes visitors of all ability levels will listen to the brochure
on their way to the park as a way to familiarize themselves
with the sometimes hard-to-navigate area, treating
the brochure “no different than an audio book.”
Rossi plans on incorporating the lessons learned throughout
the audio brochure project into his other park responsibilities.
When leading tours, Rossi said he will “take into consideration
that people’s eyes might not be what my eyes are.”
“It’s OK to use an extra word or two ... you’re just providing
somebody a little bit of extra knowledge,” Rossi said. “None
of it is wasted breath.”
Volume 87 · Number 3 | 67