The problem?

My current teacher, also the only one that teaches this specific class, has a heavy accent. The poor captioner has a lot of difficulty understanding him, and so do other students because I got a couple e-mails from other students who knew me from past classes, if I caught what he said in this or that particular part of the lecture.

I have spoken to my student advisor about this and we’re trying to figure out how to solve this issue. Have you had this issue where you have someone speaking in a heavy accent and your interpreter or real-time captioner is struggling? What do you do? Just read the text and ask the teacher to clarify at points?

Update September 25, 2009. Turns out to be a microphone issue. The department chair got wind of this and investigated. Now the captioner is able to hear better and caption. But what I find funny is that my hearing counterparts in the class, are also using the captioning services to understand the lectures done online.

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While this means an ability to caption videos easily on the Brightcove platform, individual submitters like the everyday web site visitor, is not required to do this. The pending Bill which would mandate captioning of videos, applies only to the public realm on the Internet — news, television episodes, movies. It does not apply to the private individual who is submitting an Internet video.

Regardless, this feature should make it easier for folks to add captioning to their Internet videos.

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I spent about 30 minutes yesterday writing a personal letter to my representative here, to co-sponsor or at least support the Bill which I blogged about yesterday. I also heard from my very good friend in Minnesota this morning, that she wrote to her representative Al Franken, to support the Bill as well. She’s not deaf or hard of hearing — she did it because she believes that I, as well as others, should get the same access that hearing people do when viewing Internet videos. I also e-mailed and texted some of my Deaf friends to notice this and support the Bill.  I got an e-mail from a hard of hearing friend, who said that she “firmly believe that all news videos should be captioned. This not only serves deaf and hard of hard of hearing but people learning to read English.” when I asked her if she thought that the Internet videos we offer online, should be captioned regardless of the length.

I just sent an e-mail to our corporate’s video lead this morning, about seriously considering adding captions to our Internet videos. I’m waiting to see how that goes. I mentioned the Bill, that there was technology already available for captioning Internet videos, and that we had attempted our hand at manually captioning a few here. I believe that if captions were included, there would be more page views and that the deaf and hard of hearing in the Yuba-Sutter would feel less excluded. I’ve yet to download and try out the Media Access Generator (MAGpie) which I saw yesterday. Just need to clear some time to do that in between the 20+ projects we have.

All we can do is step forth and see what happens.

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And he’s talking to me. I know he’s talking to me because we have eye contact and he’s moving his eyebrows up as if he is asking a question. But I have no idea what he said, because I can’t see his lips to read. What came out of my mouth next what was completely natural to me: “I don’t understand you, I can’t see your mouth.”

As soon as I said it, I realized how strange it must sound and apparently, so did he because his eyes widened as if in surprise. But thankfully, he did step away from the half-wall to the front of my desk where I could see him better. By then, an associate had overheard us and came over to deal with the delivery guy. My boss saw and overheard the whole thing and thought it was pretty silly. We were laughing about it afterwards … But really, why would you stand behind a half-wall and talk to someone?

I think this would be great as a cartoon too.

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When the classes started moving into the design and coding aspect, and that’s when it got tricky for the professors to type while they were demonstrating techniques. So the Student Services and I had some discussions about that and came up with Real-Time captioning and had it added to the classes. Now the professor can continue lecturing while doing demonstrations on their computers. Here’s an example of what one lecture online looks like.

The area marked in red outline, is the Caption Pod and functions as a .swf file that is fed into the lecture simultaneously. The main area at top, is the lecturing/demo area where the professor has a powerpoint presentation. The smaller pods are student roster, the text chatting area, and the professor’s microphone status. There is almost no time lapse in the captioning. My classmates are often intrigued by the captioning although they don’t know there is a deaf person in the class. It has also provided an unexpected bonus: students reviewing the Live Chats later, can open and read the captioning by clicking on the CC symbol if they can’t hear the audio because sometimes the audio cuts out. I think it’s pretty neat. The captioning service is provided by one of IADT’s sister colleges in Colorado, and has a separate window for the client (me) who can customize the text in something like a black background and white text, any font or size. Additionally, it provides a transcript in plain text or HTML at completion.

Although not perfect when it comes to simliar sounding words, it has functioned well and I’m happy about being able to participate in the online lectures. This is something for others to consider when taking online classes and don’t know what to expect.

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Full story is under this jump.

I became deaf at 14 months old from spinal meningitis. I am profoundly deaf with nerve deafness. My family chose to use sign language with me to communicate and put in me a fledging program for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing at Lincrest Elementary School. I had my first mainstreamed class experience at third grade with an interpreter who knew ASL from America River Community College’s new interpreting program back then (I’m in my early 30s). I became fully mainstreamed at 7th grade and went through junior high at Gray Avenue (before it became Intermediate School) and graduated from Yuba City High School in 1993.

I’m the eldest of three girls. I don’t have brothers. My entire family signs, although my younger sisters sign fairly. My mother is the most skilled at ASL — she used to be an education interpreter.

I told the ASL I class about my experience in mainstreamed school as “a not nice experience” because kids teased me for being deaf. However, on Facebook recently, old classmates found me and told me that they remembered me and were inspired to learn ASL because of their experiences with me. I was surprised and touched that some of my former classmates remembered me after all those years, and humbled by my small influence on them as a deaf kid teaching a few signs.

College life was when my world opened up through meeting and socializing with many other Deaf people and learning about my identity as an Deaf person in a hearing world. I took a break from college and went to live in New York, where my husband’s family is, and had my first real job experience there. After September 11 happened, we moved back here and I applied for my job here at the Appeal-Democrat shortly afterwards, and have been here since December 13, 2001.

I married my high school sweetheart whom I met in drawing class at Yuba City High, in Lake Tahoe. He is fluent in ASL. We don’t have children but five cats — Molly, Happy, Jack Tunney, Houdini, and Sammy. The class seemed taken back by the names Jack Tunney except for some of the men who immediately recognized the name. Others drew a blank on the name Houdini. I named one of my cats Houdini, after the famous magician and escapist artist Houdini, because he kept disappearing from the large box I was keeping him in with his brother Jack Tunney to help them become used to us! I’d go away, come back and find Jack Tunney dozing in the box minus his brother Houdini.

In 2007, Appeal-Democrat formed the Internet Department. As the webmaster, I am responsible for implementing the directives Courtney Lopez, the Internet Operations Director gives me. I work with Steve Nelson and Robert LaHue with related Internet content along with other department managers, the Publisher, and our Freedom Communications Corporation which we are under. Courtney is the primary person in charge of the web sites we operate. I am the one who codes the web pages and makes it all work  with Freedom Interactive’s policies/procedures on webmastering. Steve Nelson oversees the content posted online — articles, photos, slideshows, videos submitted by staff and users, forums and comments on articles. We communicate in the office primarily through Instant Messaging (Bonjour).

Someone asked about why I am in this particular industry. I answered that I love computers and technology is moving rapidly towards a virtual New Media, where a printed newspaper may be a bygone product or a rare product. I believe it is the newspaper industry’s responsibility to keep up with the technology and learn how it can evolve with new trends and expectations. It will not be 20 years later, but actually sooner. Europe already uses electronic editions with special readers similar to Amazon’s Kindle. Cari Carter had her Kindle, and showed it to the class. I do a similar thing with my 2nd Generation iPod Touch — I buy and download some books to my iPod for reading in the bed.

The technology to create virtual newspapers is already in process of being refined for mass production. Right now we are taking advantage of the social network medias and feeding short blurbs of our news to those sites for those who practically live on social networks like Facebook.

Discussing Facebook and MySpace brought up another topic: these two sites are Deaf-Friendly sites. Many, many Deaf people are on Facebook or MySpace. Deaf people can message, chat, post videos, join groups with other like-minded Deaf people and friends and carry on lively discussions.

With that note on social media, there is a link in my sidebar for quick access to join Deaf Californians on Facebook. Also, there’s an excellent video on “Trouble with Twitter” that Bill Creswell captioned. Robert LaHue shared the non-captioned version the other day, I’m sharing the captioned version here.

Enjoy!

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The UbiDuo

FREED Center for Independent Living has the UbiDuo for people to borrow and try out. Just swing by the FREED office at 508 J Street, Marysville, CA or contact FREED at 530-742-4474 (Voice or TTY).

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Susan Stacy bought those special soft-close hinges for her new cabinets from Ikea and installed them herself. They “catch” the doors/drawers of the cabinets just about an inch from the frame and gently closes, thus eliminating the unintentional slamming of cabinet doors/drawers. Her eldest daughter, Carita was also in the kitchen with us. She and my husband (both are hearing), exchanged stories about their Deaf family members slamming cabinets when they were trying to sleep in, while Susan and I laughed about how we would do things extra-extra carefully to avoid making noises but because we are deaf, we couldn’t tell what worked or didn’t work.

Susan told about how she would very gingerly close doors to try and avoid making noise and waking up her three children. I told about how I would stand by the door I wanted to close, and move it very slowly to close, to avoid slamming it. I would be standing there for almost a full minute, fighting my urge to just close the freaking door in the first 3 seconds!!!

That got me thinking about the perfect home. My husband and I want our home to be deaf-friendly and hearing-friendly. That means eliminating slamming of doors/drawers/cabinets/lids, and having the standard lights-flashing alert system. We also like having an open floor plan that allows us to sign at each other from across the house and see all of the equipment for the deaf alerters. No walls in the middle of the family room or a walled-in kitchen. Susan’s house initially had a wall dividing the kitchen/dining area and the living room until she had it removed to allow free communication.

Ever since that visit, I’ve been thinking about everything that my husband complains I make noises about — and it’s not just me. It happens in every Deaf/Hearing relationship. Banging doors, drawers, cabinets, pots and pans, etc. I went on a Googling Quest to find all of the Soft-Close hinges for my home and thinking about everything that could be used to prevent loud noises especially the toilet lid slamming in the middle of the night. I tallied up the cost: at $5 for a soft-close hinge for cabinetry times 11 cabinet doors equals $55 not including taxes. Special soft-close hinges for doors run around $20 each and work on only certain doors, times 3 or 5 doors in the house. Then I wondered why homes don’t come already equipped with those soft close features. Why not? I’m positive we are not the only people in the world that would like a slam-less home. It’s not a Deaf/Hearing problem. It’s an universal problem. Why spend over $100 soundproofing your home? Especially in these financially tight times.

Your thoughts?

Edit: The soft-close hinges were purchased at Ikea, not Home Depot as I had thought. Thanks for the correction, Susan.

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I smiled. I thought that was funny. I usually don’t have people recognizing me outside the office other than speaker situations. “Oh! You’re that girl at the newspaper!”

Speaking of that, I need to mention a speaker event I attended, while I have this spare time in between web projects and other web-related activities.

Last October 30, I went over to Yuba College to visit the ASL 1 classes. Cari Brooks, the instructor for the two afternoon classes, invited me to speak (actually, sign) to her class and tell about my life experiences as a Deaf person. I found out that they had two other speakers before me — an ASL interpreter and a hard of hearing man.

I basically told my life story in ASL, compressed in about 30 minutes or so, detailing how I became deaf, my experiences growing up in a mainstreamed school, my identity as a Deaf person, and where I am now. I don’t tell my life story often but it was fun although I was really nervous. After that, was Q & A time in which students asked me questions related to deafness; ASL, cochlear implants, sign language in the family, Baby Signs, speech therapy, dating, education for the deaf, job hunting, and experiences with hearing counterparts.

There was an interpreter on stand-by for any communication clarifications but we didn’t need to use her services except later, during Q & A when I was asked to share my Japanese-American background in which my great-grandparents met through picture exchanges, and family members that were sent to internment camp during World War II at Amache, Colorado. The interpreter was also a friend of mine that had spoken with the class prior, and we related a story together in which she discovered after 10+ years of friendship, that I liked heavy metal music and was expecting her to accompany me to an Ozzfest concert. Needless to say, plans fell apart and nobody went to the Ozzfest concert, but the incident marked her memory as one of those palm-in-face moments when she realized that being deaf didn’t mean you couldn’t enjoy music. You just experienced it differently.

She and I talked to the last class about equal access in music in addition to equal access in communications, how ASL music differs from ASL translated music, and how Deaf people can enjoy music despite being profoundly deaf. We used a music video on YouTube created by a videographer that goes by st0rmfx, as an illustration of ASL translated music. Interestingly, while I was in Orange County, my interpreters for the first 2-3 days were discussing this same interpreter and his video works!

Life stories are great to share; not just because you’re Deaf but also because of the many facets that make up who you are. Everywhere I go, I like to meet new people and try to ask what their life story is. It’s another reason why I like to socialnetwork online and read other people’s blogs.

I’m looking forward to returning to ASL 1 classes next semester — seems I’ve been asked to come back. 

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