University Captioning

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hugoboss84

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Does anyone who are university going students have used captioning in the classroom ? I mean, something like which comes on your computer as to what the professor is speaking. If anyone has any information about it, could you please share with me. Thanks.
 
They have real-time captioning (RTC) at the schools where I work, and I used to do Typewell captioning at a university. What exactly do you want to know?
 
Ohh... I just wanted to know the experience and how helpful it could be. I dont use the sign language, but depend heavily on lip reading and my HA. Still I do miss alot, and worse my univ. doesnt have the captioning thing, because it is an expensive technology. I just wanted to know how it works and how helpful it could get. Thnx
 
hugoboss84 said:
I just wanted to know how it works and how helpful it could get.
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Both the RTC and the Typewell work pretty similarly, in that the captionist has a laptop and the student has another, and whatever the captionist types, the student can see. They should be typing EVERYTHING that is said as far as is possible (overlapping voices and such, not much you can do about that).

The RTC is a little older and clunkier affair that seems to require a lot of wires, and the machine is sort of similar to a court reporter's, but it works great for people who are English-oriented. Typewell works with two PCs that communicate via wireless network cards and so it's a little easier to use since the student can be all the way across a large room, but the principle is the same.

Captionist skill is really important, though, just like interpreting. I have seen captionists who are very skilled at the technology but their English isn't as good as it could be, which makes me wonder a little what kind of standards they are subject to.

If your university can't afford captioning, what kind of accommodations are they making for you? I hope they're doing something and not just giving you the "you're not deaf enough" line.
 
Thats pretty impressive... I wished I could get it, as I had heard something of it in some univs. Here, my univ. doesnt tell me I am not deaf enough... they provide what they can provide. And going according to the law, they are supposed to help in whatever way they can. I am not in RIT/NTID, so there are about 2 dozens deaf/HOH students, but they all rely on note-takers, FM systems, ASL interp. And as for myself, I am struggling to find a way out, because a notetaker is not useful for my major (i am in computer sciences), i dont know sign language, my hearing aids dont help 99% and still i am trying to cope up with the large class size of 60-100 students.

Its pretty frustrating for me, because I dont know what will help best, but I have to do with what is available to me. I only wished I could afford to get to RIT - they dont even offer any sort of financial aid, nt even scholarships!!
 
hugoboss84 said:
Its pretty frustrating for me, because I dont know what will help best, but I have to do with what is available to me.
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Wow. I'm angry and frustrated just reading this! There has got to be some sort of ADA issue here but as usual I'm at a loss when it comes to legal technicalities. I suppose the "reasonable accommodations" clause comes into effect and they can claim they've done everything "reasonable" to assist you.

Obviously the disabilities office at your school is useless if they're telling you you're not deaf enough. Have you tried going to the dean or any other higher-level members of the administration? This seems totally unacceptable to me. With two dozen deaf/HOH students they don't have any RTC'ers??
 
No... I am in Canada, not the US. I already approached the Dean, President and everyone. All say to approach the Disability Office. And you know, the disability office determines if the need is essential for captioning or not. Since the demand is not there, or people are not aware of WHAT it is, why would "any" university do it for one damn student, i.e. me ? I already have 2 more semesters to go before graduating, and it wont make sense demanding it at this stage. Yes, I am thinking of strongly persuading them to get the technology as it would be useful for other students as well. As for myself, I have had a hard time in class - and the least the President could tell me - we are doing what we can do best for you.

the ASA and ODA (Ontario Disab. Act) are almost the same - no striking differences. The only problem is that most people have not heard of RTC being common all over USA. How the other deaf students manage - note-takers, ASL interpreters. And I guess they too are not aware of RTC, so they gladly accept whatever it is available!! this is really weird you know...
 
Also there is another HOH student in my class, but he doesnt have so much of a problem in the lectures. Not to forget, that it is not always possible to say that this student and me have the same level of hearing loss - you can say, we have mild/severe/profound but not the level of loss. Because hearing seems to be very sensitive and some people hear better than others. The Office Of Disability doesnt seem to sense this problem. All I think they do is, they often tell me that how come I have so much of a problema and the other guy has fewer problems. I wonder how the heck can I go about explaining this and that to them, when I am not an audiologist, nor a doctor; just a simple undergrad student !!! The only good part is that the university has been quite helpful when it comes to buying me a new pair of hearing aids (they gave me a grant), but there is no support elsewhere.
 
hugoboss84 said:
The Office Of Disability doesnt seem to sense this problem. All I think they do is, they often tell me that how come I have so much of a problema and the other guy has fewer problems.
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That is amazing. I'm really sorry that you get such lousy support from your school. And also sorry I missed that you were in Canada not the U.S....not that that is an excuse!
 
hugoboss84 said:
Not to forget, that it is not always possible to say that this student and me have the same level of hearing loss - you can say, we have mild/severe/profound but not the level of loss. Because hearing seems to be very sensitive and some people hear better than others.
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Absolutely...it depends on what kind of loss you have, not how much. If someone has a severe hearing loss in some frequencies, they might be more "functional" than someone who has a mild hearing loss in ALL frequencies. It depends.
 
VamPyroX said:
We have C-Print at RIT.
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whats that ? I am sorry, but I am new to all these things. I got through RIT and was about to go, but didnt get a scholarship to support myself. Are you at NTID ?
 
Hey, thought I'd chip in. I don't know how it is in Canada, but despite all the legislation we have in America, there are times when we have to fight for what we need anyway.

If your situation is comparable to a situation in America, here's what I'll chip in with.

Universities don't like captionists because they cost more than interpreters do (you already knew that) but if your university provides two interpreters for one class, chances are they're actually paying more than the cost of one captionist! Over here, you have to go through a documentation process. Schools are required by law to provide "reasonable accommodation" and we don't have a choice as to what that accommodation is as long as "reasonable" is the key word.

To get a captionist, I would first say that an interpreter is NOT a reasonable accommodation--maybe because you don't know ASL or maybe because aliens ate all the certified interpreters. Whatever your reason is, you rule out the interpreter option. Then you make the case that captioning is the most viable reasonable accommodation.

Hope that helps. I know I've had to push my way around to get what I needed before. Life's funky like that.

And hey dude, kick butt in college. ;)
 
If you haven't already, specifically ask for CART/RTC. That might do it - maybe even look up the name of a local vendor and provide it to the school.

I'm sure Typewell/CPrint are great for some cases, but they drive me nuts - I'm hearing a good deal of what's going on, so the last thing I want is a summary; I want it all; I want to get that one important word I didn't catch every sentence or whatever, and fit it into what I'm already seeing and hearing. And especially for a CS major (I'm EECS), I would be suspect of Typewell/CPrint. If you're summarizing (I haven't used TW or CP a lot, but I believe that's part of what they do), you need a decent understanding of what's being taught, and CS is tricky that way.

Again, this is not a knock on TW/CP in general; I'm sure they're useful in certain situations and for certain uses. But for a CS class where the problem is not hearing bits and pieces, I'd be cautious about relying on it.
 
ismi said:
And especially for a CS major (I'm EECS), I would be suspect of Typewell/CPrint. If you're summarizing (I haven't used TW or CP a lot, but I believe that's part of what they do), you need a decent understanding of what's being taught, and CS is tricky that way.
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This is interesting. When I learned TW, it was the pilot program at my university. The system was not yet set up for the students to have their own laptop, so essentially we were an expensive notetaking system. We would transcribe the lectures and then the notes were given to the student(s) later.

Now the thing is the students got different service depending on which captioninst they had. I can type almost 100 wpm without special software, so with the addition of the neato abbreviation system built into TW I could do word-for-word pretty much all the time. Other captionists tended to do a lot of summarizing, which was fine for film or history classes but as you say, probably not so good for technical classes. I had to wonder what it must be like for those classes where we had to switch off and students would get a transcript that was partly word-for-word and partly summarized!

When I stopped doing TW to focus on my ITP, I believe they were just starting to implement the wireless connectivity. However, I don't know if they continued to allow captionists to summarize, or if they moved closer to attempting word-for-word. I seem to remember the training emphasizing that it was not necessary to get word-for-word accuracy and it sounds like you have had more recent experience with TW, and that this is the case.

It would definitely be a good idea for any student who needs caption-type accommodations to look into what would be the best match with his or her classes. I never worked in a technical classroom so I didn't think of this, or actually even remember that we weren't "supposed" to do word-for-word transcription, since I always did anyway. Thanks for bringing that up.
 
Interpretrator said:
I can type almost 100 wpm without special software, so with the addition of the neato abbreviation system built into TW I could do word-for-word pretty much all the time.

[snip]

and it sounds like you have had more recent experience with TW, and that this is the case.
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100 wpm is incredible. I think most people talk around 200 wpm, so I could definitely see word-for-word as a possibility, but that would depend a lot on one's natural typing skill. But I think TW generally lags behind the conversation a bit more than CART (in my experience, at least), which confuses the heck out of me - the out of sync-ness.

I have had recent experience with TW, but not much. I'm more going on what I've heard about it, largely from the two TW notetakers I've met. I'm also thinking about a guy I know who uses cued speech in class; he said he prefers it because it means he doesn't have to rely quite as much on the interpreter's understanding of the class.

Again, I don't want to knock TW. But I personally don't like it, and I suspect that it's not as well suited to technical subjects as CART (**remembers the times his captionists have turned to him and said: "did it come out right? That didn't make any sense to me."**) because it is closer to interpretation than translation/transliteration.
 
ismi said:
I'm also thinking about a guy I know who uses cued speech in class; he said he prefers it because it means he doesn't have to rely quite as much on the interpreter's understanding of the class.
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Right, good point. If you are going word-for-word you almost don't have to know anything at all about the subject matter. Definitely not the case for interpreters! I think you're right in that TW is not set up for word-for-word captioning and other options would be better if that is required. The students I did TW for were either a) foreign deaf students who weren't really getting much out of the class discussion anyway, being weak in both ASL and English, or b) just slightly hard-of-hearing students who only needed to "fill in the blanks" after class. I really don't know what the current student population using TW is like.
 
I am currently using Real Time Captioning (RTC) for all my classes except my discussion classes. I have to say that it does help tremendously, because I don't miss anything the professor says in class, since I can read it on the laptop and understand everything he's saying.
 
CART got me through

I feel like you are taking a page out of my own book. I am a severly HOH individual (severe to profound as all the docs say... is there a difference :dunno: ). I was originally going to college in Dallas, Texas. At the time they only had interpreters, note takers, and the likes. I had grown up in a hearing world and never learned ASL. I took the classes to learn the language but it wasn't enough to get me by in specialized science classes and other upper level courses. I managed to pass my lower division as I spent most of my time teaching myself, but as I moved towards upper division I struggled. I increasingly needed to know what the professor was saying and it began to reflect on my grades. So badly that I withdrew from school. I just had no idea what was going on. About 5 years later I moved to San Diego with my wife. In California all colleges, community and university, are required to offer CART. When I learned of this I ran to the nearest CSU and signed up. You wouldn't believe the difference it has made. I am now graduating at the end of this year with over a 3.77. It is all because of CART.

I am sorry that you do not have this option, and I urge you to take a stand in Canada to get some legislation passed to make it a reality, otherwise transfer to a school here in the states. You wont regret it.
 
WOW
I'm hard of hearing and currently attend northeastern illinois university here in chicago.. I have an interpretor and it helps a great deal... I thought this topic referred to movies that are played in classes....

they are usually NOT captioned. which is real frustrating for me, a guilt trip for the teacher and a new spotlight on the interpretor where the rest of the room is dim for the students able to see the movie.

Hmm.. I should try asking my accessibility center and see what they say.
 
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