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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I’m for this because I’ve been watching shows online since they began appearing on the Internet. I rarely watch TV because I’m always on the computer, plus it’s easier to watch shows in sequel online because places like Hulu organize them into episodes. Although iTunes, Hulu and Google have been working to provide captioned videos on their web sites, it’s still inadequate because it’s purely voluntary. There is no requirement legally binding companies to provide their videos with captioning included, online. Show your support today and have your voice counted!

Why have captioning? Nowadays, televisions are mandated by the Telecommunications Act in 1996 to have closed captioning available. This needs to also be passed into shows and movies on the Internet. Please support the 21st Century Communications and Video accessibility Act of 2009.

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Image via Wikipedia

While I was setting up and testing my new home network over the weekend (wireless Internet and printer and still a headache to do), I noticed when testing connectivity on my iPod Touch on Sunday that one of the featured apps in Apple’s iTunes store was Sign 4 Me. It’s an app that would install information on sign language on your iPhone or iPod to help you learn ASL. It costs $9.99 to put on.

I was intrigued by this offering on iTunes and I did a search for keywords containing “ASL” and “sign” on iTunes and found that there is Baby Sign ASL,  ASL Ultimate, ASL Pro, ABC Sign at about $4.99 each. Baby Sign ASL has a lady on it signing to you, while the ASL Ultimate and Pro has pictures showing the signs. Sign 4 Me has a virtual man dressed in green signing to you. Reading some of the reviews, someone mentions that this app uses SEE.  :/

I find it interesting that these apps showing ASL would be on an iPod/iPhone and wonder how many use them. Still, I would recommend folks who want to learn ASL, go and take ASL 1 at Yuba College. Two of my friends teach the ASL classes there — Kimberly Dethlefsen-Koons and Cari Carter. I believe a third one is teaching in the Fall. Anywway, I thought the fact that ASL apps are available on iTunes was interesting to share.

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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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Relay Service Using VideoPhone

I’ve been wondering lately what it’s like for the hearing person on their side when they communicate with someone who is deaf. What is it like for you to be on the phone with a relay operator?

For example, my husband doesn’t like using the relay to communicate with me because no matter what, there’s still a third person. There’s a third person listening and speaking, and for some people that is just hard to take. “You don’t have a male voice.” “My wife doesn’t sound like that lady relay operator.”

Some friends don’t like hearing a stranger speak so familiarly with them on the phone, but understand that it may be the only way to communicate with me on the phone. Most of my friends actually text or Instant Message me instead, bypassing the third person and communicating directly with me. We haven’t really discussed feelings of the relay service because to me, it’s part of life for now until something changes down the road.

Mind sharing?

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