shel90

Once I learned ASL and got ASL terps, I was able to understand and keep up with the lectures. English in print or oral terps were too hard on my eyes and trying to process information in such a limited way was mentally exhausting. Not worth it.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

Deafness

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Beowulf

I am curious as to what Realtime Captioning looks like. Is it a single line, like that of a ticker tape, or what? I am a speed reader but even with an interpreter, I find I need to look away from him/her in order to jot down notes.

jillio

The way it worked when we used it for films was 2 line. But the first line was being deleted as the second line was being put up.

Beowulf

Just like two lines of captioning on television, eh? Gosh, that blows!

jillio

Yep, pretty much. Especially when you are trying to take in detailed and technical information.

faire_jour

And that is great for you. This person doesn't want an interpreter. He wants access to a visual form of the spoken English. That seems reasonable to me.

jillio

Requesting a visual form of the lecture is reasonable. That can be accomplished, as stated prior, in any number of ways. Demanding that it be realtime transcription is not reasonable, and the ADA does not provide for the accommodation of choice. It simply provides for reasonable accommodations that will provide equal access.

souggy

Seconded! And after 3-5 hours of reading real-time captioning daily, your brain doesn't want to touch the textbooks anymore!

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Warning! Contains skewed comments & inane ramblings. May cause spontaneous human combustion

jillio

Granted. And while the lectures are important, and a student does need equal access to voiced material, they also need to be left able to read the textbooks for the information that supplements and clarifies the lecture.

souggy

I laughed at "they also need to be left able"

Remind me when I went through 7 hours of CART...went home... turned on the TV and puked into the garbage can when the commercial break was over and closed captioning popped up. Felt queasy and hurled again when I opened up my Brave New World novel to study for the exam the day after.

That was a really bad day...

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Warning! Contains skewed comments & inane ramblings. May cause spontaneous human combustion

jillio

Been a long, long day filled with students and lectures. I stand corrected. My grammar is lacking at times, too!

Sorry that you were left unable to read the captioning, much less a textbook, however!

TheWriteAlex

Just because CART doesn't work for some people, doesn't mean it's not appropriate for others, and I think you guys should be careful about discounting it. You're toeing a dangerous line here saying, "If he just learned ASL, then there would be no problem!" Doesn't that sound a little too familiar to you? I mean, if deaf people would just learn to read lips, then we wouldn't need interpreters. Right?-- do you see what's wrong with your argument here?

I have CART during my creative writing workshops when my work is being critiqued. I follow the conversation by listening and lipreading, but when I miss something, I can quickly glance at the computer screen to fill in gaps. It doesn't erase itself. Not sure why other systems do, but that's a technological fault, IMO, not a problem with real time captioning itself. At the end of the session, I get a transcription of the conversation, which I edit down for notes. This is far more effective for me than trying to pay attention to everyone talking and writing down notes on my notepad without looking at it (which I can do for limited amounts of time, but it requires massive amounts of concentration.)

shel90

Never said that about this guy. Was just sharing my personal experiences with CART and how exhausting it was for me.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

faire_jour

But they have not given him that. They say that an FM is "good enough". I think the fight would be over if he was given access to a visual form of English.

TheWriteAlex

Don't worry, Shel, I wasn't singling you out. But I just wonder why people are ragging on CART so much. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but for me it is a very valuable tool, and I firmly believe that all options should be available to everyone. We are all different and require different accommodations. It doesn't give me any type of advantage; It just levels the playing field. Although, it often seems to me that when you give a smart deaf person a level playing field, they blow away the competition. If hearing people can't handle that, then F-- em!

jillio

I don't think that anyone meant to imply that CART could not be useful in certain situations. However, when you have a student that managed to get into med school without it...no easy feat for anyone, deaf or hearing...he is going to have a heck of a time convincing the school that it is a necessary and reasonable accommodation.

jillio

How do you know that he has not been provided print of lecture material? It doesn't state that anywhere in the article. They have offered him a notetaker, as well. No, the fight is not over, because he is demanding a specific type of accommodation. And he has the right to take it all the way through the courts under the ADA. The problem is, the ADA does not provide for the sepcific accommodation requested, but the accommodation that is reasonable. Evidently, he made it all the way through undergrad, maintaining a GPA high enough to get into med school. That isn't easily accomplished for any student, no matter their hearing status. The school has a valid argument by saying that he has been performing at or above the same level as his hearing peers for the 4-5 years of pre-med, so CART is not a reasonable accommodation. Cost figures in as well. Med school cohorts are generally very small. The cost of CART is difficult to justify if the cost is out of proportion to the amount of tuition taken in, particularly when it will benefit only one student.

The ADA is not a cure all for accommodations. And no where does it provide for the preferred accommodation, if another accommodation provides access. The fact that he made it to med school is actually against his side of the argument. If he wasn't able to access lecture materials with the accommodations already provided, he wouldn't have been as successful as he has been.

souggy

This is where a good solid IPP or IEP is needed before transition to college... I waas able to make demand for real-time captioning and ASL interpreters based ony IPP/IEP, but I couldn't ask for anything more than that since it was "unreasonable accommodation" since I obviously succeeded in high school with the pre-existing support. Some of the other deaf students were able to get notetakers and recorded lectures-- while I didn't, why? It was part of their IPP before switching over to post-secondary.

Now it has been 5 years since the last IPP was drawn up, so I can now ask my university (if I get accepted next semester) for accommodations not listed on the old IPP according to the administrations.

I know Canada doesn't have an ADA, but it seems to to be the basis of their argument in the article...

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Warning! Contains skewed comments & inane ramblings. May cause spontaneous human combustion

faire_jour

So, if a deaf person is smart and successful, they don't need accomodations? That doesn't seem right....

jillio

This is an excellent point, souggy. Transition services from high school to college are generally lacking to non-existent in the U.S., particularly when those students are coming from the mainstream. It is one of my pet peeves. Good transition services would solve the myriad of problems I see students encountering when they enter college.

jillio

That isn't exactly what was said. I said that they will have trouble obtaining a very expensive accommodation simply because it is their preferred accommodation if they have demonstrated that access has been achieved with a different accommodation.

deafdyke

Yes, exactly!!!!
This isn't about struggling with NO accomondations....it's about "Oh wah wah wah! I'm doing fine by any defintion, but I want Name Brand accomondations so I can get straight As!"

Reba

What's wrong with straight A's?

If this student will be my doctor someday, I want him to be as well educated as possible.

sallylou

Graduate school is different than undergraduate. Sometimes professors don't even give grad students A's. Grad students are supposed to be held to a higher standard. Most people who drop out do so because they decide that they aren't happy. You don't see people flunking out often. The students are already screened and very capable. This deaf person is very capable or he wouldn't be there.

We had a blind student in my law school class. He was a very capable person and was well-liked by others. He had a great attitude. I can imagine that it was hard to be labeled the blind guy, but he took it in stride.

If I were this med student, I would be concerned about how the classmates feel about the constant demands. What he may not realize is that he's going to be practicing medicine with his classmates and they are going to be a potential source for referral of patients. It's important to have a good professional image even before being licensed.

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Happy holidays!

faire_jour

So if he is smart enough to get by without accomadations (or maybe he did have them before, we don't know) he doesn't deserve equal access? That seems like a very dangerous suggestion. Or is it just because he chooses to have his accomodations in English instead of ASL?

Access, not grades, is the key here.

Reba

If more access results in better grades, that's a good thing.

sallylou

"Reasonableness" is the key here. No one is suggesting that a person should not have reasonable accommodations.

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Happy holidays!

faire_jour

And what is unreasonable about it? All I have heard is "he made it to med school, he must be doing fine." THAT seems unreasonable to me.

sallylou

I can't tell you whether it's reasonable or unreasonable. That's just the statutory requirement. There's a whole process to determine what a reasonable accommodation is, and this particular person is using that process. We'll have to wait for the outcome of that process to see what happens. Justice is not always swift.

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Happy holidays!

Beowulf

Who sets the statutory requirements, the school or the state? I am getting confused here, lol.