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Real-time Captioning—Reasonable Accommodation in the Classroom

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained:

I am a full-time student returning to school after working for 30 years. Because of my hearing loss, I am now retraining in a back office setting. My hearing loss was caused by high doses of Erythromycin as a premature baby (25 weeks). One of the products I am searching for is software or something that will enable me to record my lectures in class, and have them typed out on my computer.

The voice recognition systems, like Dragon Naturally Speaking that I have looked into, do not quite do what I would like. I cannot have all my professors sit for two hours so Dragon can recognize their voices and even if they were willing, the recorded version of their voice is still different enough that Dragon software does not work. Do you know of anything else out there to assist hard of hearing people? With all of our technology advancements, certainly something has been developed.

As you have found out, the speech to text technology is not quite there yet—at least not when you have various speakers. With one speaker, a good microphone and lots of practice, it can be passable, but not perfect.

For example, I’m also trying out Dragon Naturally Speaking to caption my own presentations. Sometimes it does a fantastic job and other times what it produces is totally off the wall. I still need to work with it a lot more to get the accuracy up. Hopefully, it will prove to be quite good in the long run. However, getting it to work with any person’s voice, and without preceding practice, is still some years away.

As a result, you need something else at this time. The best that is available is real-time captioning, usually shortened to CART. If you are going to a public school or university, they have to provide you with reasonable accommodations, and for hard of hearing people like yourself, CART is a reasonable accommodation.

Real-time captioning can also be recorded so at the end of the class, you have a complete written transcript of everything said in the classroom.

There are two ways you can use real-time captioning. First is to have the CART reporter right there in the classroom with you. The CART reporter hears what is spoken and types it on their steno machine that is hooked to their computer. Their computer translates this “phonetic shorthand” into proper English and displays it on a screen at the front of the room so you (and anyone else that needs it) can read it (or it could be displayed on your laptop screen if only you need the captioning.

The other way is to use remote CART. In this case, you are connected to the captionist via the Internet—so you’d need a laptop computer and an Internet connection. Your professor would have to wear a microphone and you’d have to get this signal to your laptop. That’s it.

Remote CART is cheaper as there is no traveling time involved for the CART reporter and there are no minimum times. Also, if the local captionists are busy, they can hook you up with another captionist elsewhere in the country (or world for that matter).

I use remote CART for a number of my presentations. In fact, I’ll be using remote CART for my presentation this afternoon. It works just as well as if the CART reporter is sitting there in person.

If your classrooms have access to a fast enough wi-fi network, and you have a wireless enabled laptop, an FM mic for the professor and the FM receiver to plug into your laptop, remote CART could work very well for you.

Of course CART is relatively expensive—in the neighborhood of $85.00 to $150.00 per hour—but the school is required to pay for it if this is what you need.

If you want to learn more about CART, check out http://www.cartinfo.org.

Study the information on this web site and you’ll learn a lot.

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Free Visor Cards

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Ototoxic Drugs Exposed

Ototoxic Drugs Exposed 3-volume set You don’t have to let drugs damage your ears leaving you with hearing loss, tinnitus, hyperacusis, ear pain, dizziness, vertigo or other ear problems. This book set reveals how you can greatly reduce your chances of getting these conditions.

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Take Control of Your Tinnitus—Here’s How

If your ears ring, buzz, chirp, hiss, click or roar, you know just how annoying tinnitus can be. You do not have to put up with this racket for the rest of your life. This book teaches you many things you can do to help bring your tinnitus under your control so it no longer bothers you.

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Sounds Now Too Loud for You?

Hypersensitive to Sound front coverIf some (or all) normal sounds seem so loud they “blow the top of your head off”, or make you wince or jump, or cause you headaches or ear pain, or affect your balance, or result in fear or annoyance of sounds so you feel you have to avoid these sounds, this book is for you!

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Hearing Phantom Sounds?

Phantom Voices Ethereal Music & Other Spooky SoundsWhen hard of hearing people begin hearing phantom voices or music, they immediately worry they are going crazy. It never crosses their minds that they are sane and are just experiencing Musical Ear syndrome.

Click here to learn more about the strange phantom sounds of Musical Ear syndrome and what you can do about them.

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Center for Hearing Loss Help

Neil G. Bauman, Ph.D.
1013 Ridgeway Drive, Lynden,
WA 98264-1057 USA
Email: neil@hearinglosshelp.com
Phone: 360-778-1266 (M-F 9:00 AM-5:00 PM PST)

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"The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life [which also includes perfect hearing] through Jesus Christ our Lord." [Romans 6:23]

"But know this, in the last days perilous times will come" [2 Timothy 3:1]. "For there will be famines, pestilences, and [severe] earthquakes in various places" [Matthew 24:7], "distress of nations, the sea and the waves roaring"—tsunamis, hurricanes—Luke 21:25, but this is good news if you have put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, for "when these things begin to happen, lift up your heads [and rejoice] because your redemption draws near" [Luke 21:28].