Existing captioning services are not always user friendly or free. With over 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, captions were not a realistic option for each video until now. Google is now betting that this new service will encourage more users to provide captions.

How does it work? Google explains:

“We’ve combined Google’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video.

We’re also launching automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, to make it significantly easier to create captions manually. With auto-timing, you no longer need to have special expertise to create your own captions in YouTube. All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and we’ll use Google’s ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video.”

This is a positive step forward for Google and one that is welcomed globally. Greg Rice from DeafAccessfilms.com notes that there are more deaf and hard of hearing people in the US than the entire population of Canada - not to mention the worldwide deaf population. He also hopes that this will lead to “the making and showing of captioned films for sales and exhibitions.”

Captioned videos also stand to enhance education. Students can access videos worldwide. National Geographic videos support captions but students can now access new topics like the sciences and even additional languages.

One teacher commented, “working in a district with 5-10 deaf students, this is huge. By law, all DVD’s sold should be CC-enabled but close to one-third do not, and our sign interpreters have to work extremely hard to keep up”.

Further Reading:

Google’s video tutorial for automatic captioning (with captions!)

Captioning YouTube Videos With CaptionTube

TranscribePod Make Podcasts Fully Accessible

Digital Media Content Accessibility For Students

Using Blog Tools For Storytelling & Picture Diaries

(compiled by Miriam Walsh)

March 19th is the deadline for having your say on this essential issue.

The National Audiology Review is looking for parents, carers and service users to inform the HSE of their concerns and experiences with the service.

Simply send a letter to the NAR, outlining your experiences, what changes you would like to see in your area and tell them your story, highlighting the issues you have encountered.

This is your opportunity as a carer to have your say so it is vital to write down your opinions and send them off.  Some pointers:

• What would you change about audiology services in your area?
• What needs to be done to achieve this?
• Do you find waiting times too long?
• What are your thoughts on newborn hearing screening?
• Are you happy with the availability and quality of information?

This opportunity will not arise again and things will not change if the HSE do not know about the experiences of parents/ carers/ service users.

The closing date for submissions is March 19 so don’t delay.

Please take this opportunity to put your thoughts on paper and submit them.

Submissions to the expert group are invited from members of the public, other interested stakeholders and/or local advocate groups on this Review.

Submissions may be emailed to primarycare@hse.ie or posted to:

National Primary Care Services Manager

National Primary Care Services Office

Merlin Park Hospital

Galway.

This document is historic in being the first agreed approach to education and supports from deaf-led organisations and other organisations providing services to the Deaf community and hard of hearing people in Ireland.

Over 300 delegates attended the conference, which included the launch of the education policy paper by Dr John Bosco Conama, a keynote address by Prof Marc Marscharck from NTID (New York), and the overview of a new centre for deaf education from Liam O’Dwyer, CEO of the CIDP.

Some excerpts from the presentations

Liam O’Dwyer, CEO of the CIDP:

” There is not one school type ideally suited to all deaf and hard of hearing children. Some children thrive in schools for the deaf, others in mainstream programmes, and some hop from one to the other. What’s important is that the placement of deaf and hard of hearing children should take place in the context of a comprehensive, cohesive and consistent education programme for each child. ”

O’Dwyer also outlined three main interventions that are needed:

1. Additional supports for the education of deaf and hard of hearing children in mainstream schools
2. To enhance and develop the role of the specialist deaf and hard of hearing schools
3. To set up a new centre for deaf education in Cabra, Dublin

Policy Paper presented by Dr John Bosco Conama, Deaf Academic:

Two key principles

1. “Early language acquisition, be it signed and / or spoken, is the key to the future for all children, especially so for deaf and hard of hearing children. If this stage of a child’s development is neglected, or managed late or inadequately, the child is left without language fluency, leading to serious learning and socio-economic consequences.”
2. “Early identification of the extent of hearing loss is of critical importance for every deaf child and for his / her parents. The introduction of universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) is essential to ensure that appropriate linguistic and other supports can be immediately accessed by parents.”

These excerpts are just a ‘taster’ of content in the documents to be posted on the websites of CIDP, DeafHear, the IDS and TCD. Questions should be directed to the CIDP, whose organisation of the conference was excellent.

Further Reading:

Deaf Education Conference - March 4, 2010

The Catholic Institute of Deaf People’s Education Policy

Trinity College’s Deaf Support in Third-Level (DS3) programme, offers multiple supports to deaf students, of which captioning is just one option.

Education supports help unlock deaf students’ full potential, but the students have to self-advocate for their own supports. Before first meeting a college access officer, students need to know what supports are available, and can be arranged. While this situation is not ideal, it’s a step in the right direction.

Further reading:

An Aspiring Deaf Dentist Identifies The Challenges

Real-Time Captioning At School Via Mobile Phone

Premier Captioning & Realtime

Communication Access Information Center (US-based)

Fundamentally, inclusive education teaches children about diversity, and leads teachers to diversify within their own professions, for social benefit.

This academic blog post, “Inclusion Is Needed In Classrooms“, makes a solid case for inclusive education, with an itemised reading list appended.

Further Reading

Schools ‘Must Change Their Attitude To Disability’

Teaching Hearing Pupils About Deafness

Practical Inclusion Tips From A Pretoria School

Web Technologies Make Story-Telling Inclusive

Interactive Whiteboards Promote Pupils’ IT Literacy

TranscribePod Make Podcasts Fully Accessible

Including Deaf Children At Preschool - Part One

How did you identify the potential challenges you (mum & creche) might meet during Charlie’s early days there?

(The Mum)

Once Charlie’s deafness was confirmed, we understood that communication methods had to be adjusted. He couldn’t hear commands like the others, or hear songs or rhymes that are so important at that age. He also didn’t respond to adults like the other kids, as he didn’t realise someone was talking to him unless he could see their face.

Our liason officer from the then NAD (now DeafHear) advised us and we were assigned a visiting teacher for the deaf who introduced us and the creche to different ways of communication. These included - being very visual, using simple signs (we did a Lamh course) and being tactile, as in touching him to get his attention.

It was hard to identify potential challenges then, as we had no idea what being deaf meant - we didn’t realise early on, that he couldn’t hear and so probably assumed he could hear us if we shouted enough.  As time went by and we met more professionals and got a definite diagnosis, we started to understand what profound deafness meant and how to communicate.

(The Creche Manager)

From an early age we did notice Charlie was not responding to our voices in comparison to other children his age and we also knew from his mum that extra support might be needed. Since Charlie was the first child we had in the creche with deafness, we had no experience with the situation.

To be honest we acted on instinct and common sense in the beginning. After meeting the visiting teacher for the deaf we learned about different ways to communicate with Charlie and him with us. We also did a very useful Lamh course to learn the signs and understand how the child may be feeling.

We did a course on special needs which we did not find helpful at all. What we realised was that all staff members needed to learn to communicate with Charlie as he would meet several members of staff during the day. The other children also needed to learn to face Charlie when they were speaking to him, or touch him to get his attention.

The awards, presented in association with Eircom, aim to “raise awareness and recognise the innovators, developers, forward thinkers and experts who are pioneering the changes happening in how the Irish Government delivers services to its citizens.”

Judges of the 2010 shortlist looked at how real cost-savings and efficiencies can be achieved through collaboration across the public sector to foster efficiency, leadership and innovation in online government services. Points were given for self-service options, start-to-finish interactive processes, creative problem-solving, and potential for cost and/or resource savings.

Other websites short-listed in the same category include Bluebrick.ie, ArtLinks, the Irish Maritime Development Office and the Online Maths Programme developed by Meath County Council and NUI Maynooth.

IDK is delighted with today’s win, and wishes to thank its sponsors, board members, donors and volunteers for their support in the past three years.

Related Links:

Winners at Ireland’s eGovernment Awards 2010

Short-list video for Education category (subtitled)

NPPR Excels At eGovernment Awards 2010