http://wiki.ohiolinux.org/index.php?title=Accessibility&feed=atom&action=historyAccessibility - Revision history2024-03-29T09:56:24ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.35.0http://wiki.ohiolinux.org/index.php?title=Accessibility&diff=67&oldid=prevMchua: Created page with '== Hearing == === The idea === * Specifically inviting deaf attendees interested in FOSS to the event - local Ohioans, and then schools with strong deaf/tech presences like RIT…'2010-09-29T13:15:44Z<p>Created page with '== Hearing == === The idea === * Specifically inviting deaf attendees interested in FOSS to the event - local Ohioans, and then schools with strong deaf/tech presences like RIT…'</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>== Hearing ==<br />
<br />
=== The idea ===<br />
<br />
* Specifically inviting deaf attendees interested in FOSS to the event - local Ohioans, and then schools with strong deaf/tech presences like RIT/NTID and Gallaudet.<br />
* Having a combination of volunteer transcribing, and volunteer and sponsored ASL and CART, throughout the event.<br />
* A low-key way for people to indicate "I do ASL" (stickers, perhaps - this is generalizable to other languages as well.)<br />
<br />
=== Volunteer transcription ===<br />
<br />
I think a lot of people,<br />
even if they didn't have any hearing loss, would be willing to attend<br />
a realtime text conference rather than a virtual conference that only<br />
offered streaming audio, because they could have it streaming in the<br />
background or on a separate monitor and be able to be there while<br />
getting their work done, scrolling back over the text feed if they get<br />
distracted or they miss anything, which streaming audio can't really<br />
offer.<br />
<br />
[[User:Mchua|Mchua]] is willing to coordinate volunteer transcription (at least remotely - not sure if I'll be on the continent to come to OLF 2011). This would consist of the following:<br />
<br />
* An Etherpad instance set up before the event, with one document for each session. These would be linked-to from the schedule grid.<br />
* A projector in each room for displaying the Etherpad document.<br />
* Instructions and ahead-of-time coordination for volunteers that would result in the following for each room:<br />
** 2 volunteers who type fast switching off on "primary" transcription - getting as much as possible down in realtime, not worrying about typos, punctuation, or spelling, and skipping over missed words. An easy way to coordinate the switch-off between these 2 volunteers is to do it by slide.<br />
** 2 volunteers switching off on "cleanup" - filling in missed words and phrases, fixing spelling, etc. behind the primary-transcription volunteers.<br />
** Any other peripheral help on the document as people jump in, of course - but those 4 people will do the majority of the work.<br />
* A way to thank transcribers afterwards.<br />
<br />
This has been done at prior events in different ways, including Wikimania, FUDCon, and the Community Leadership Summit (in Mel's direct experience).<br />
<br />
=== Asking attendees ===<br />
<br />
Some options are to<br />
make a big noise in advance of the event, saying, "We want to make OLF<br />
accessible. Please let us know your accessibility requests in advance<br />
so we can arrange them!" Then you'd only have to get signers or<br />
captioners for specific events and you'd be able to tailor the<br />
requests to the specifications of whoever requested them, but even so<br />
that might mean more money than you're able to spend. <br />
<br />
=== Sponsorship ===<br />
<br />
Finding sponsors<br />
can be a really good option. A lot of people don't know that<br />
for-profit businesses can take both a tax credit and a tax deduction<br />
for providing communication access:<br />
<br />
http://ccacaptioning.blogspot.com/2010/09/ada-tax-credit-and-deduction-for-small.html<br />
<br />
The credit is particularly tasty: "The tax credit is available to<br />
businesses that have total revenues of $1,000,000 or less in the<br />
previous tax year or 30 or fewer full-time employees. This credit can<br />
cover 50% of the eligible access expenditures in a year up to $10,250<br />
(maximum credit of $5000)."<br />
<br />
So that might be a nice carrot to waggle in front of the noses of any<br />
corporations who'd like to sponsor part of your event. With CART, you<br />
can also offer simultaneous streaming to the internet, and either<br />
charge for ad space on the streaming text space or ask for a "remote<br />
registration fee", or something of the sort. <br />
<br />
=== ASL/CART volunteers ===<br />
<br />
And getting volunteers to provide either ASL interpretation or CART is<br />
also an option, though it might be tricky to do. We providers can<br />
sometimes be kind of wary to offer pro bono services, because we're<br />
worried that once word gets around that we do it for some clients,<br />
we'll be expected to do it for all conferences and public events, and<br />
then we're kind of sunk.<br />
<br />
If you can find ASL<br />
interpreters or other captioners (or, I guess, C-Print/Typewell<br />
notetakers, though I think they're a less than ideal accommodation,<br />
because they're nonverbatim, so they generally only get down about as<br />
much information as the bullets in a Powerpoint slide) who'd be<br />
willing to volunteer, that would be cool. <br />
<br />
In terms of the whole<br />
certification/non-certification thing, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't<br />
really know about the legal intricacies of any of this stuff. I know<br />
there are plenty of non-certified ASL interpreters and CART providers<br />
out there, and some are perfectly fine and some are lousy, but I don't<br />
know what the potential consequences of hiring uncertified people<br />
would be, if any. I'd be inclined to say it's not a problem, with the<br />
caveat that incompetent captioning and interpretation can sometimes be<br />
almost worse than none, and especially if it's someone writing words<br />
to a giant screen in front of the room, it can look pretty terrible if<br />
they don't know what they're doing.<br />
<br />
=== A budget vision ===<br />
<br />
$0 budget: Finding providers (certified or not, but with some word of<br />
mouth indication that they're at least competent) willing to donate<br />
their services on specific request from Deaf/HoH attendees, in<br />
exchange for promotional consideration at the conference.<br />
<br />
Unlimited budget: Projected CART for the whole room plus internet<br />
streaming, as well as ASL interpreters on the platform, with cameras<br />
tracking them and video screens amplifying them for the whole room,<br />
kind of like you can see on my demo page with the New York Public<br />
Library's Pursuit of Silence event:<br />
<br />
http://stenoknight.com/demo.html#cartprojected<br />
<br />
=== Impact ===<br />
<br />
1 out of 10 people in this<br />
country have at least some hearing loss, and even well-amplified<br />
lectures can be hard to understand, because people can't get any<br />
speechreading information from any distance of more than 5 feet or so.<br />
If there are 500 people in the audience, 50 of them will be helped by<br />
CART. If there's a significant Deaf contingent, all of them will be<br />
helped by ASL interpreters, and many of them by CART as well. And<br />
people with Auditory Processing Disorder<br />
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder), which is<br />
quite common among people on the Autistic Spectrum (who are themselves<br />
quite common among hackers) are helped enormously by CART as well.</div>Mchua