Sept 4, 2020
1) Can you all please introduce yourselves and tell us about you? Thank you for giving me this unique opportunity to speak about my passion! You know those courtroom scenes in movies? There’s usually an older lady who looks comatose, randomly pressing down on keys on a weird-looking machine. Well, that could be me, but happily, I’m not comatose—ever. In the early ‘80’s I trained to be a court reporter at Langara and then at BCIT. Then for 15 years, I worked as a court reporter. What was initially really exciting work, turned to boredom and very long hours: if not writing, then preparing certified transcripts. Then one day I was contacted by a person with hearing loss: Would I caption the (CHHA) Canadian Hard of Hearing’s AGM? Would I? From that first emotionally charged experience, I knew I had found my passion. I formed, Accurate Realtime Inc., the only BC company solely dedicated to providing instant (otherwise known as real-time) speech-to-text for people with hearing loss in any situation: court, hospitals, schools, church. We originally all graduated from an accredited school as certified court reporters, writing at 225 wpm with at least 96% accuracy. My company provides captioning to post-secondary students as well as individuals in corporations, government agencies, etc.
2) What got you interested in what you are currently doing? Court reporting didn’t really suit my personality. It wasn’t meeting my thirst for knowledge in a non-adversarial environment, and I wanted to serve the community in what I thought was meaningful work. I hate being bored, too. Since I was 15, when I read that Cicero, the great Roman orator, had devised a shorthand system for keeping up with speech, I’ve been fascinated by the concept. That led me to enrol in school to study Pitman manual shorthand, but a Hansard writer from Ottawa encouraged me to study machine shorthand. I’m glad I listened to her. The evolution of the first manual shorthand machines has morphed into incredible computerized systems that though, they still retain the same keyboard map, is an electronic powerhouse. Fortunately, computer technology has progressed in parallel to our software and hardware, so TV captions, CART or Communication Access Realtime Translation and court reporting are still the best way to deliver transcription services.
3a) What are your thoughts on what is currently happening around us and around the world? I think we’re becoming more insular. As social animals, humans need to interact. This new way of being I think is driving wedges between people, cultures, nations. Our priorities have been forced to shift. I think people feel a sense of loss and fear for the future. I have to remind myself that we’re all feeling this, and am so grateful that we can function as normally as we can, in spite of the many physical constraints and inconveniences into the unknown future.
3b) Personally, how has the pandemic affected you and the work you do? Well, we’re very fortunate to still be employed, and probably busier through the summer than we would normally have been since our work has shifted to exclusively online service. Our rates, however, have dropped because of cancelled conferences. Also competition from various speech-to-text companies are insinuating themselves into the market. Clients don’t know the difference between the providers. Just remember that if you’re struggling to understand what you’re reading, it’s poor quality.
4) We, the Accessibility Collective, have mentioned that it is difficult to manage, get motivated or concentrate doing work or classes online. Has this affected you as well or the people you work with? We have been offering remote (online) work for quite a few years now, so that hasn’t changed much, except we have to now familiarize ourselves with umpteen webinar platforms. I have not yet had much feedback from our students, but what I have heard is they and corporate clients were concerned that they would not be able to participate fully. Learning new software on top of all the other demands of life is stressful. We now have to provide a lot more rehearsal opportunities for them, the professors and our corporate clients.
In a nutshell, though online CART service is not as financially rewarding as onsite service, I feel in the remote setting, I provide better service: I can hear the instructors consistently well. They don’t wander around the class and I don’t have to contend with extraneous classroom noise. I have access to all students’ names so can insert them in the transcripts that our HoH students receive, our students can read each others’ questions in the chat area, and I can also see the slides more easily. For some reason, Instructors seem more cooperative with getting captioners with the materials we need.
As far as challenges, online classes are now delivered in diverse ways. Some instructors elect to pre-record classes, some have a smattering of videos throughout their classes, with or without captions. The auto-generated captions can be really poor resulting in misinformation and/or frustration: HoH students shouldn’t have to work harder than a normal-hearing person. As a result, our students now want the captions embedded into videos rather than us providing a separate transcript, so this is a new service we now offer. The resultant video text is 100% verbatim and much easier for the student to use. However, it’s been challenging finding a price that compensates the captioner as it takes three times as long to prepare video embedded captions than the actual length of the video.
5) Catherine, has there been a shortage of transcribers pre-COVID and is there an increase in transcribers or demands for transcription? And if so, how has your company adjusted? Yes, there has always been a chronic shortage of skilled CART captioners, even pre-COVID. For that matter, there has been a shortage of certified court reporters and captioners for many years. I believe this shortage is because our work is as a silent participant in any event: no one knows what we do! For a two-year training program, the drop-out rate is 80%. Then to becoming a great shorthand writer takes many more years and the equipment purchase and maintenance and software licence and maintenance is very expensive, like $10,000 to start, not to mention the cost of schooling. It’s high-stress work where one is always striving for perfection in sometimes less-than-optimal environments. As well, generally court reporters prefer litigation work to the challenges of mastering the many academic disciplines with their specialized vocabularies. That’s it for me.
6) Bowen: do you think with the demand of online classes, that this would bring about more sign language interpreters and transcribers? If so, what can you say about this? (Feel free to comment on the global scale as well!) B) You seem to have access to both sides of the online experience - you’re a person with a hearing disability and you're an educator. Furthermore, teachers are not paid during the summer time, and are also off work during this time as well. However, with the BC government being unable to provide answers regarding the format of classes being online or in-person, depending on the Covid-19 trends. How do you think that prepares teachers in supplying an accessibility-friendly education for all ages? Jessie, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think there are less resources or lack of education when it comes online versus in classes?
7) What is something you find challenging about online classes that you think is important for professors or fellow students who are not hard of hearing or have a disability to understand? B) What can you say about students with disabilities who need to learn social skills (like kindergarten students) or need to work on group projects (like many of us have to do)? What would your role be able to do in meeting those needs if classes were all online?
8) How have you been handling the transition to online teaching and learning?
9) Do you think that having to adapt teaching materials to an online format and delivery will increase awareness for accommodations for students with disabilities?
10) Jessie, your experience with online classes has been better for you. A) Can you tell us how? B) Do you find captions interfere with your spatial learning needs? C) What are your feelings about this upcoming fall term?
11) Do you think the trend of online classes can work in the long haul?
12) Let’s close with a message from each of you applicable to the relevant parties: students, parents, employers, educators, interpreters, governing parties. In regards to making education more accessible, in your opinion, what can they do during these difficult and unprecedented COVID times?
As far as everyone having communication access, pre- and post-COVID, just ask for what you need from the institution’s Accessibility Centre, the instructors, the employer. It’s better to ask for more than what you think you need, than to discover too late you’re wasting time trying to sort out communication access and missed out on participation.
The fact is that as a person with hearing loss, unless you have a monitor like captioning, you really don’t know what you missed or misheard. So don’t settle for “good enough” or “I’ll get by,” or “it’s too much trouble.”
I suspect future meetings will be much more blended, so invest energy into being familiar with the basics of the webinar software you’ll be using, observe online etiquette, including being punctual, and expect high standards. Everyone can avail themselves of captioning by the click of the closed-captioning (CC) button.