Setting up good audio from a group luncheon for remote CART

Recently, I was asked for advice about how to deal with a particularly challenging listening situation. I thought I'd share my thinking publicly and to see if anyone might be able to offer additional suggestions. Here's the situation: A man with profound hearing loss who functions at a very high level professionally would like to be able to participate in weekly lunch gatherings with 11 friends. They use a long table in a quiet room. He is willing to pay for remote CART (Computer Assisted Realtime Translation), which could presumably be displayed on a smartphone, tablet, or other wireless device. The main question is: how could the CART writer obtain access to the conversation without a complex and intrusive microphone set-up? Such group conversations are among the most challenging situations for oral people with hearing loss. Due to numerous factors involved, which I'll describe below, I don't think there is an easy, elegant solution available at this time, although I do see some strategies to make this work. Ideally, it needs to be fairly easy for everyone to participate in the group conversation, so it would be ideal for the microphone(s) required by the remote CART provider to be close enough for people to speak into. A remote CART provider typically cannot see who is speaking and will depend greatly on the quality of the microphone(s) and of the clarity of the audio signal going into the microphone(s). When human speakers are far away from a single microphone, the mike generally cannot capture their speech well enough. Even a room that might be described as quiet generally still has some reverberation and background noise in it, and those factors will reduce the critical distance of the microphone within which the microphone can capture sound well. A single omnidirectional microphone, even if it is a pressure zone "conference" microphone, will either pick up too much background noise or will not be able to capture distant speech sounds well. (I have used remote CART providers in different situations, and I've personally seen the CART output fail when the CART provider cannot hear clearly enough due to people being too far away from the mike, even when two pressure zone microphones were used.) Another factor to consider is that typically, at a long table used for a meal, there are frequently several conversations happening at least some of the time. A static microphone system designed to pick up everyone's voices is probably not going to provide clear enough audio for a CART provider to work with. The user of the CART will thus need to determine who he wants to be transcribed, and only the sound of the desired speaker should be sent through to the CART provider. When everyone is sitting down eating lunch, however, it would be difficult for him to control directly whose voice is getting transmitted to the CART provider. One option might be to ask someone outside of the group, like a relative or friend of the user, to be a dedicated communication facilitator whose function is to bring a microphone to the person whose speech needs to be transcribed. Another possibility might be for various members of the group to be asked to listen to the sound being captured by the mike(s), using an assistive listening system with multiple receivers or an audio loop system, so that they can help bring a microphone to the desired speaker and ensure the quality of the audio. (Since hearing loss starts to become very common among men as they age, some members of the group may personally benefit from using an assistive listening system anyway. However, all users of the system would be listening to the same conversation.) Let's look further at how the primary person with hearing loss could best be situated at the table. A person who cannot hear well generally benefits from using other strategies to gather as much information as possible about what is going on in the environment, like seeing who is talking and seeing who is coming into the room. I think it's generally more practical for someone who is functionally deaf to sit at one end of a rectangular table (when that is what's being used) so that he can see everyone within his line of sight and then see more quickly who is talking. With a total of 12 people at the table, five people would be sitting on each long side. The CART user might control one (directional) microphone himself but it could be possible to set up one other microphone with a long cable (or connected to an extension cable) that might be located near the other end of the table. Ideally, the microphones would have an easy-to-operate push-button switch so that undesired sound isn't being transmitted. If the primary user with hearing loss still has some residual hearing, I would recommend that he be equipped to monitor the sound as it is sent to the remote CART provider to ensure the best signal is coming through so that he can quickly make adjustments. The enlisted communication facilitator(s) also need(s) to monitor the quality of the audio signal to make sure that the CART provider can hear well enough to perform the transcription. Then, a splitter from the microphone system can be used to send the signal to both an assistive listening system for the local users and to the microphone or line input jack of the wireless device that is relaying the sound to the remote CART provider. The more that people who are present in the conversation can directly perceive the quality of sound that is going to the CART provider (or the person with hearing loss), the better empowered they will be to troubleshoot any audio problems quickly and effectively. If it's possible to facilitate the participation of a person with hearing loss in a group conversation that feels significant to that person, I believe it's worth it to work these things out. The easier it is for everyone to use the microphone system, the more successful this will be. I would recommend trying out a microphone setup, perhaps at a convenient location such as the primary user's home, and working out the kinks in stages *before* trying to work with the CART provider. Once the system works out for the local people, check whether a remote listener can hear through the microphone setup via a microphone or line input on the Internet-enabled computer, and make sure everything is working well. (Note: the computer needs to be set up properly so that any built-in microphone on the computer is *not* active. Only the external microphone system should be sending through sound via the computer.) In the past, I knew of some assistive listening systems that had had built-in microphone mixing (such as a Multi-Talker system from www.etymotic.com), but to my knowledge, they are no longer being produced. If anyone reading this blog knows of microphone or assistive listening solutions that would be useful for a situation like this, please share what you know! And/or if you have other thoughts about what might work, please share those as well. (In the future, video glasses like Google Glasses could be useful for this purpose. The primary user could wear the glasses and send video the CART provider, and could also read the captions on the glasses. Google Glasses are not yet available to the general public, however.) (Copyrighted by Dana Mulvany)

PBS now offering online captions for complete fall season videos?

Yesterday, I happened to discover that PBS.org had started to provide closed captions for Masterpiece Theater earlier this fall season. I found this out on my own after learning on Facebook.com that "Return to Cranford" had been put online; I went to the PBS.org site, clicked on the video, and was first presented with an uncaptioned video (an ad). When the Masterpiece Theater video started playing, I noticed that there was a "CC" option in the player (after bringing my cursor into the area of the video), and then clicked on it to turn on the CC. (It's necessary to bring the video back to the beginning in order to catch all the dialog.)

(I've learned since this discovery that PBS hadn't apparently made the captioning work for Internet Explorer yet. I was using the free Google Chrome browser. I would expect PBS to make the captions work with all browsers, however.)

Many other videos are available with captions at other web sites, too. TED.com began providing English subtitles for every single one of its videos years ago (depending on availability, volunteers then translate the subtitles into other languages). CNET.com was perhaps the first non-television web site to announce that they would start captioning their videos. (New CNET videos can take a couple of days to get captioned.) Hulu.com offers captions for virtually all dramas and comedies from ABC, NBC and Fox and some series from pay TV networks. CBS.com started offering captions on its videos earlier this year (2011). MSNBC.com quietly started offering a combination of subtitles/captions and an interactive transcript without any fanfare or a press release. (YouTube.com, a hosting source for videos from amateurs as well as many businesses, non-profit organizations, and educational facilities, hosts numerous eclectic videos with captions, though some videos can be found with subtitles or lyrics imprinted onto the video instead. Since many people have put the lyrics onto videos of popular songs, YouTube can be a great way for people with hearing loss to finally understand the lyrics to those songs and how they are sung.)

The U.S. 21st Century Video and Communications Accessibility Act, signed into law in 2010, will require all U.S. television programs that were originally captioned and which are displayed online to be provided with captions. Thus it can be expected that more and more U.S. web sites will start providing captions for their online videos very soon. Soon, if we've missed the broadcast of a television program, we'll be able to catch up with that television program if it's provided online!

If you've found other sources of captioned or subtitled videos, please comment on those sources and share the URLs with us.

Amusing Speech-to-Text Errors

I've decided to create a new page on Facebook called, "Amusing Speech-to-Text Errors."  It'll be an easy place for Facebook users to share the occasional very funny gaffe they see from captioning, subtitles, relay services or speech-recognition technology used in services like Google Voice.

The location of the page is at this location:
Amusing-Speech-to-Text-Errors

Please click "Like" on the page there so you can see status updates from that page.

Captionfish beginning to show many more captioned movies

With many thanks to the sustained advocacy and legal work done by John Waldo of Washington CAP, many, many more movie theaters in the USA are now providing captioned movies.  Captionfish.com is beginning to show more captioned movies now which use the CaptiView closed captioning technology.  If you benefit from captioning, be sure to check http://www.captionfish.com before making plans to see a movie!  (You might also check the movie theater's own web site to doublecheck whether a movie is available with captions or subtitles.)

For more information about this development, please see:

http://www.hearinglosslaw.com/2011/05/articles/washcap-1/public-facilities/regal-cinemark-commit-to-full-captioning/

and

http://hlaa-advocacy.blogspot.com/2011/07/closed-captioning-in-movie-theaters.html

Many thanks to Chris Sano of Captionfish for working so hard to make it possible for us to find these movies!   

CBS finally provides closed captions for online episodes!

Some time ago, I had heard that CBS was planning to provide closed captions for its online episodes first shown on television.  Today, I checked the most recent episode of "The Good Wife" because my TiVo hadn't recorded the last episode properly, and found that there were captions available!  A Google search found no mention of CBS providing this feature, and it's not announced anywhere I can find on the CBS web site, so it's well-hidden.

(Hulu.com has been showing many captioned episodes for shows from other networks (ABC, Fox, NBC, and some premium networks), but CBS had been quite late to the game.  PBS has been quite slow as well, too.  I just checked whether the Masterpiece episodes were captioned on the PBS web site, and there was no indication of them.)

It may be a bit challenging to figure out how to turn on the captions.  CBS didn't do a good job of helping people to recognize right away that the episode would be captioned; everybody else is using a "CC" or "subtitle" indicator that can be seen right away.  Here are some instructions:

Go to www.cbs.com.  Find a *full* episode of a series that you're interested in and click on it.   To turn the captions on, bring your cursor into the middle of the video to see the menu show up.  Look for and click on the plus sign for "More" on the lower right hand side, click again on "CC  captions" just once. (Unfortunately, there seems to be no immediate visual indication of when the captions activate except by waiting to see if the captions show up; the letters of "CC Captions" don't change color or shading noticeably.)  You'll have to click on the bar on the right hand side to bring the video back to the beginning point because you will have missed the beginning dialog.

For now, captions will need to be activated each time you see a new episode.  Once you get used to the menu, pause the video every time you start a new video and then try to quickly turn on the captions before the whole window shrinks into a small box and makes the menu disappear.



Obviously, the menu is not well designed, but hopefully it will be improved over time.

Adding Captions to YouTube videos

A while ago, I received the following question, and thought the answer might be of interest to others:

"I need some advice for how to add captioning to videos that are uploaded on the net (for example just to YouTube)."

First, let's discuss YouTube because it offers two free tools to help users caption their own videos:  auto-synchronization and automated captioning.  

Either tool is under the control of the holder of the account where the video has been uploaded (or by someone who has been given the authority to use that account).

However, imagine that you already have a complete script for a short video under fifteen minutes long (YouTube's current limit for uploaded videos from most standard account holders). YouTube's software can automatically synchronize the words in the text with the spoken audio.  This saves a great deal of time and is the best way to provide the captions if you already have a complete transcript.  (However, it will still help to read the "Captioning Key" and you may still want to use VideoCritter.org afterwards to make any needed changes; both are discussed below.)

The second YouTube tool is automated transcription, which uses Google's speech recognition software to produce captions and which generally inevitably produces errors.  By default, new videos uploaded to YouTube are now automatically transcribed.  If the speech on the video is clear and in unaccented, standard English, and if there is no background noise or music, chances are that the automated transcription might work fairly well at producing usable captions.  The resulting caption file should then be edited to correct any  errors. 

Viewers do not see the automated captions unless they have elected to turn on the automated transcription by pressing the red CC button on the lower right hand side of the video, then clicking on "Transcribe Audio", and then on "OK" after they have been made aware that they are using a beta service.

YouTube began providing free automated transcription of all videos uploaded to YouTube early in 2010.  (The service can also translate the English captions into different languages.)  See:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/youtube-launches-auto-captions-for-all-videos/

An easy way to edit the resulting caption file is to use the free third-party tool at:

http://www.videocritter.com

To see a captioned video showing how to use this resource to provide a completely new caption file or how to edit an existing caption file, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/user/videocritter#p/a/u/0/PEXZ9Wxq85g

Before starting the editing process, I highly recommend looking at the following very good overview on captioning

http://www.mncdhh.org/captioningessentials

For example, there are "style guidelines" and a "Captioning Key" about how to format the captions properly which is particularly useful to read.  Many amateur captioners would do well to look over the Captioning Key. Although I'm a long time user of captions, I still saw tips there that hadn't been obvious to me. 

There are other tools as well to caption videos or YouTube videos, which are mentioned in the above resource. 

If you want the ability to caption any video in any language, check out http://DotSUB

I haven't had personal experience using any of these captioning tools.  (Being hard of hearing, I'm usually not able to make out the dialog in videos in order to caption them.)  Please feel free to share your experience using these captioning tools by posting a comment below.

Update:  I've written this blog with the presumption that most people reading this blog would be interested in learning how to do the captions themselves. However, there are professional companies who specialize in providing captions for videos.  See the comment below for more information.  I've edited this blog to incorporate the corrections provided. 

Commenting on the San Francisco Chronicle article about the lawsuit against Cinemark

Disability Rights Advocates has brought suit against the movie theater chain Cinemark for not doing enough to provide closed captioning in its theaters.  The San Francisco Chronicle has an article here about it:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/30/BAMJ1GJO6I.DTL

There have been many comments written in response, most of which are quite negative. Most of the people writing negative comments seemed very concerned that they'd have to pay much higher ticket fees if the suit was successful and if it cost $10,000 to install the technology, so they think people with hearing loss should just stay home and not drive up costs for anyone else.

However, the movie theaters have actually been very, very profitable. Last year alone, Cinemark paid out roughly $16,300 in dividends per theater. And Mary Watkins of WGBH's National Center for Accessible Media stated today that the actual cost of the Rear Window Captioning technology is now around $5000, not $10,000.

After learning all that, I submitted a comment on the SFgate.com web site to provide some of this additional information.  If you like my comment, please mark it there as liked so that it'll be more likely to be read as a "popular" comment and will educate more people.  (The most popular comment is negative and was "liked" by 129 people as of the time of this writing.)  The easiest way to find my comment might be by going to this link:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/comments/view?f=/c/a/2010/11/30/BAMJ1GJO6I.DTL

Here's what I wrote:

1) According to Mary Watkins of WGBH, the actual cost of the Rear Window captioning system is around $5000 and is even less when purchased in bulk. (However, there are other kinds of closed captioning technology options in development, too.)

2) The movie theater chains can well afford to install this equipment. Last year alone, Cinemark paid out roughly $16,300 in dividends per movie theater. If they made their theaters more accessible by spending $5000 on the closed captioned equipment, they would bring in even more customers and make even more money.

3) Hearing loss probably already affects someone within your own family or circle of acquaintances. One out of 3 people over 65 has hearing loss. If more movie theaters were fully accessible, think about how enjoyable it would be for that person with hearing loss to be able to join other people in an outing to the theater instead of being left out. 

4) Your ability to hear is a gift. Have compassion. You could lose it at any time.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/30/BAMJ1GJO6I.DTL#ixzz175LA8yP1

Feel free to add your own comment there, of course!  (You'll need to register in order to do so.)

Dealing with inaccessible business practices: Netflix

Out of 10,000 movies and more than 20,000 TV programs which Netflix streams online, the company has made only 300 available with captions.  Yet just yesterday, Netflix announced that it would be charging deaf and hard of hearing people a deaf tax in order to continue to use its DVDs, while people with normal hearing would be given a whopping discount to use only streaming videos at $7.99 a month.  Netflix really, really likes people who have normal hearing.

What?  Did the company really say all that?  Of course not---but it might as well have.  Its new pay structure discriminates against deaf and hard of hearing people, who would have to pay more to use the DVD service while continuing to subsidize the streaming videos they can't use because Netflix has been so slow to caption them---or even make it possible to do a search for the few that are captioned.

Yet virtually all new DVDs and TV programs have captions or subtitles.   Why hasn't Netflix figured out how to repurpose the captions and subtitles from DVDs more quickly for online streaming?  Hulu.com does this with a very short turn around period without even charging viewers.  Netflix has dragged its feet about doing this even when it's raking in millions of dollars from its subscribers.  The problem seems to be one of attitude and will, not resources. 

The technology's clearly available.  YouTube can automatically synchronize a caption file with the audio in videos that are uploaded to its web site, and does this for free for all videos uploaded to the web site (if the option to do so is turned on).  Although Netflix would probably have to pay Google, the owner of YouTube, to use that technology, doing so would pay off in making the streaming videos accessible to 36 million people with hearing loss and millions more who use captions because they're not native speakers of English, have auditory processing disorders, or other reasons.  There's a huge market out there for captioned content, but the company seems to have made hugely erroneous assumptions about the large need for captioning.  An investment of a couple of hundreds of dollars in reformatting the already provided captioning for each movie would allow thousands and thousands more subscribers to watch those movies.

Deaf and hard of hearing subscribers had been putting up with this inequity because the DVDs were accessible to them and there was no added cost to them for using the DVDs, even though they were not getting the same level of service that all other customers were. But now?

Read this copy of the email that Netflix sent out to a subscriber of the unlimited plan announcing its price increase:

We want to let you know about two important changes to the Netflix service.

1.  The price of your current plan is changing from $16.99 a month to $19.99 a month. This new price will be effective with your next billing statement on or after January 2, 2011, and will be referenced in your Membership Detail. With your current plan you can both instantly watch unlimited TV episodes and movies on your computer or TV and receive unlimited DVDs by mail.

2.  We now also offer a new $7.99 a month plan which lets you instantly watch unlimited TV episodes and movies on your computer or TV.  This plan does not include any DVDs. All the titles you can watch instantly on your current plan are also available on this new plan, and as a reminder, not all titles on DVD are available to watch instantly. This new plan is available immediately – if you'd like to switch to this new plan at any time, simply visit Your Account.

Why the changes? Our selection of TV episodes and movies available to stream has grown dramatically, and as a result most members want us to deliver unlimited movies and TV episodes two ways: streaming instantly over the internet plus DVDs by mail. The price change will allow us to continue to offer the popular plan choice of unlimited TV episodes and movies streaming instantly along with unlimited DVDs. The new plan, which does not include DVDs, is a great option for the increasing number of members who only want to watch instantly. The $7.99 a month price reflects no DVD shipping costs on this plan.

We hope you're enjoying great TV shows and movies from Netflix, and that you'll continue to enjoy Netflix on whichever plan you choose. We realize you have lots of home entertainment options, and we thank you for your business. As always, if you have any questions, please call us at 1-800-715-2146.

–The Netflix Team

My suggestion:

Stop rewarding with your dollars a company that is knowingly disregarding the caption needs of deaf and hard of hearing people.  Remember, it doesn't even make it possible to do a search for captioned streaming videos.  You have other options for entertainment (discussed below).

Tell the company that it needs to do four things:

a)  Offer a DVD-only plan for people who cannot use uncaptioned streaming video (which will include deaf and hard of hearing people)

b)  Provide an online search engine that allows people to find captioned or subtitled videos on the Netflix web site

c)  Hire fresh new talent who are motivated and dedicated to providing captioning for DVDs as quickly as possible.

d)  Let you know when it substantially improves the accessibility of its services for deaf and hard of hearing people so that you can become a customer of Netflix again

What are your other entertainment options?

1) Hulu offers many captioned TV programs and some  movies.  Search for captioned media by going to the "Recently Added" or "Most Popular" page and click on the CC box.

2) Many local libraries loan out DVDs, which you may be able to reserve online

3) For new releases, you can reserve DVDs online from Redbox, which has kiosks at 7-11, Lucky's and other places.  For more info, see:

http://www.redbox.com/HowItWorks.aspx

(I have not used this service myself.)

If you know of other options that offer access to captioned entertainment, please leave a comment.

I believe we need to reward companies that do try to provide access, and to pull our business from companies that don't. Let me know what you think!  If you spot any errors in this, please let me know that as well.


Late Additions:

The Netflix CEO blogged more than a year ago about  Netflix's technical reasons for not providing captioning:
http://blog.netflix.com/2009/06/closed-captions-and-subtitles.html

Comments made to Access Board on May 12, 2010

On May 12, the United States Access Board held a public hearing on "its proposed refresh of requirements for information and communication technologies (ICT) covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act." I spoke at this hearing on some of the accessibility needs of hard of hearing people which did not appear to have been adequately addressed. As we had only three to five minutes to speak, my comments were streamlined. The gist of them is provided below. Sentences that are italicized below were not spoken out loud.

My name is Dana Mulvany, and I'm speaking here today as a consumer advocate who is hard of hearing; I also work as a consultant specializing in hearing loss issues. My comments today are focused primarily on the needs of people who are hard of hearing, of which there are more than 30 million in the U.S.A.

What I'll be doing here this morning is providing some information about the needs of people with hearing loss along with numbered technical points that I would like the Access Board to take into consideration.

• A. Most hard of hearing people have much stronger hearing in the low frequencies compared to their ability to hear high frequencies. Many hard of hearing people cannot hear high frequency sounds at all.
  
  
• 1. This means that alerting sounds for the general public should be required to contain multiple frequencies, especially low frequency sounds, and should not use just high frequency sounds.
  
  
• 2. There needs to be a required option to customize alerting sounds for the need of the individual user with respect to the frequencies used by the alerting sound, not just the loudness level. (This will also help people with normal hearing in environments with substantial noise because due to the phenomenon of "upward spread of masking," low frequency sounds mask, or cover up, high frequency sounds.)
  
  
• B. In order to decipher speech at their highest level possible, many hard of hearing people need high fidelity reproduction of speech across all speech frequencies with as little noise as possible.
  
  
• 3. This means that all audio components need to be capable of high fidelity reception, transmission and generation of speech for maximum speech comprehension. These include microphones and telephone hardware used by people who do not have a disability themselves but who would communicate with hard of hearing employees and/or members of the public.
  
  
• 4. Telephone and VoIP services also need to transmit high fidelity audio to the maximum extent possible. (Unfortunately, many cell phone carriers are choosing not to transmit the lower frequency part of the speech spectrum in order to conserve bandwidth, and this is having a highly adverse effect on the speech comprehension of hard of hearing people.) I thus endorse the Access Board's effort to address Audio Clarity for Interconnected VoIP.
  
  
• 5. It would indeed be very helpful if the Board would require that any auditory features, where provided, include at least one mode of operation that improves clarity, reduces background noise, or allows control of volume, in addition to adding the other features I mention today. (This is my answer to Question 13.)
  
  
• C. Because of uneven hearing loss in both ears, including single-sided deafness, many hard of hearing people need all the audio delivered either to one ear or both ears. In other words,
  
  
• 6. Manufacturers need to provide an option to switch stereo sound to mono. (Apple has already been doing this for certain models of the iPod Touch and the iPhone 3GS.)
  
  
• 7. It is often important to be able to use both ears to hear, not just one ear, because each ear may hear very differently. Whenever possible, the ability to hear with both ears should be provided.
  
  
• D. Speech comprehension for hard of hearing people can increase enormously by being able to speechread and hear at the same time. For many people with severe hearing loss, speechreading provides information about consonants that they might not otherwise hear.
  
  
• 8. Video communication technology therefore needs to support the simultaneous transmission of speechreading and audio at the same time for hard of hearing people. The technology should also support the provision of text from relay services directly on the video.
  
  
• E. The majority of people with hearing loss do not use hearing aids.
  
  
• 9. It would be highly desirable for communication equipment to provide customization of the frequencies in the audio signal. Apple has done this for music by providing an equalizer function on some of their iPhones and iPods. It would thus appear to be technically feasible for manufacturers to provide the same function for all audio emanating from their products.
  
  
• F. Captioning is very important to people with significant hearing loss. Unfortunately, many people have significant trouble figuring out how to turn it on and may not even realize it is available.
  
  
• 10. Controls for turning on and customizing captioning need to be as easy to use as possible.

Thank you for your attention to these important issues.

(End of written comments)

I plan to provide more complete comments, which are due to the Access Board by June 21st, 2010, and encourage other people to do so as well. Here are some of the related documents from the Access Board:

http://www.access-board.gov/news/ict-hearing.htm

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/notice.htm

Feel free to provide some feedback or questions here about what I myself said.

[Note:  The due date for comments was corrected from June 12th to June 21st.] 

How to see automated captioning for new YouTube videos

As I hope most everyone knows, YouTube recently started providing automated transcription/captioning for all new videos uploaded to YouTube. If you missed the announcement, here's an article about it:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/youtube-launches-auto-captions-for-all-videos/

I just did a search for a new YouTube video to doublecheck how to make the captions appear. It turns out that there are a couple of steps to take to show the automated captioning, and that merely seeing the "CC" with a red background on the bottom of the video doesn't indicate you will see captions now.

For example, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZLvFrl6qk&feature=aso

Click on the "CC" on the bottom part of the video and wait for the menu to pop up.

Click on "Transcribe Audio (Beta)" at the top. This turns on the automated transcription/captioning which is done for new videos. (Most older videos won't have that feature enabled yet.)

After activating the automated captioning, one can then choose to change the caption settings (the font and the size of the captions) and one's account settings. (If you don't yet have an account on YouTube, it's helpful to set one up so you can set captioning preferences, save your favorites, create playlists, etc.). I just changed my own YouTube account settings so that automatic captioning is always activated.

The captioning is pretty cool!

Note that the automated captioning will invariably have errors in it if the owner of the video hasn't corrected it. Some of the captioning will probably be funny when it hasn't been corrected yet. Let me know of any really funny ones you see!

Dana

Making Outdoor Movies Accessible to Deaf and Hard of Hearing People

Recently, my homeowner's association announced it would be showing an outdoor movie, "Kung Fu Panda."   I emailed the activity director:

"Will the movie be shown with subtitles?  Subtitles would make the movie accessible to people with hearing loss, of which I'm one. Subtitles are also very useful for children still expanding their vocabularies, as well as for people who aren't native speakers of English.

"(The City of Rockville shows subtitles when they show movies downtown.)"

Here's the answer I received: 

"No I'm sorry. The vendor we are using is on a much smaller scale than the City of Rocvkille and we do not have the capablitiy to show subtitles via his equipment."

When I thought about this answer, I realized it didn't make sense to me.  I realized that both people might be confused about the difference between a DVD's closed captions and the English subtitles or SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing).  Many people use "captions" and "subtitles" interchangeably, but they're not at all the same.  

Here's an edited (improved) version of what I wrote back:

"You or he might be confused about the difference between closed captions and English subtitles.  While closed captions would require special technology in order to be shown, English subtitles on DVDs are normally very easy to turn on.

"If he is using a DVD player, he should have a DVD player that is capable of showing English subtitles.  (I would expect he is not using a film projector.)

"I have a DVD player myself that I got from Walmart for less than $40 which can show subtitles. Most DVD players have this capability.  This vendor probably does have a player that can show English subtitles (and if not, it would be cheap for him to upgrade to one; he could even borrow mine)."

The upshot was that the vendor did have a DVD player that could show subtitles, he used that player, the English subtitles were turned on, and I enjoyed being able to see the movie along with a lot of other people from my homeowner's association.  (It was fun to see the children interacting with their parents!)  I later heard from another audience member that he and his wife, who were both non-native speakers of English, really enjoyed seeing the movie with subtitles, and their young children also benefited from being able to read what was said.  I think probably quite a lot of people enjoyed the subtitles there.

My impression so far is that most new DVDs made by members of the MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America) are probably going to have subtitles in English.  Years ago, the MPAA had voluntarily agreed to provide closed-captioning on all of their DVDs.  Perhaps because HDMI cables don't transmit closed caption data, the members of the MPAA generally seem to be providing English subtitles on Blu-Ray disks and on most other new DVDs, though they're still usually providing closed captions on the non-Blu-Ray DVDs.

The landscape about providing access to outdoor summertime movies has thus changed a great deal.  Now it's going to be much easier to provide access for deaf and hard of hearing people (and non-native speakers of English and young readers with limited vocabularies) when fairly new movies are being shown.

Older DVDs that have closed captions and no English subtitles will be a bit more difficult to make accessible, however, but it's still possible to show closed captions from DVDs via projectors:

1. More and more projectors are being released on the market that do have the capability of decoding NTSC (analog) captions from external devices, including DVD players.  (It may be confusing to learn that a digital video disc (DVD) uses "analog" NTSC captions, but that is because the captions were originally designed to be decoded by analog (NTSC) TVs, and the caption format remains the same.)   In my opinion, all schools, libraries, government agencies and audiovisual engineers should consider making sure that new projectors they buy have the capability of decoding NTSC captions via the S-video and composite video inputs (and preferably, the component video input as well, though upconversion and progressive scanning would need to be turned off on the DVD player for the captions to be decoded via that input).  
   
   
2. A makeshift solution for displaying captions from a DVD is to use a powerful enough laptop computer that is capable of displaying a DVD via a projector and which has a DVD software program installed that can decode captions from the DVD.  (The free Windows Media Player software has the capability of decoding captions from DVDs, as do many other DVD programs.) Not all laptop computers have the capability of displaying a DVD on an external monitor or projector, however, and at this time, I don't know what technical specifications a computer has to have in order to display a DVD on an external device.  (If you know the answer to this, please share!)
   
   
3. Some DVD-recorders that have an ATSC tuner AND an NTSC tuner *may* be able to decode the captions from a DVD as well.  The Panasonic DVD recorders starting with the letters DMR appear to have this capability (*all* of the video output seems designed to pass through the internal caption decoder).  There are other DVD recorders with tuners that handle captions differently and which do not decode the captions from the DVDs (only the video input from television may be decoded, while the video output from DVDs is not necessarily designed to pass through the caption decoder).   If you know of other brands of DVD recorders that will decode captions from the DVDs, please provide the make and model number in a comment on this blog.
   
   
4. Perhaps in the future, there will be some stand-alone DVD players developed that have the ability to decode captions.  At the present time, there's no requirement for them to do so. There's legislation proposed by the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technologies that would require such devices to have built-in decoding of captions.  In the past, the cost of decoder chips had been estimated as being less than $2; I imagine it's less than 50 cents now. If you'd like to support COAT's legislative efforts, check out their web site at http://www.coataccess.org/.
   

I hope this information provided here will help many more deaf and hard of hearing people enjoy outdoor movies this summer!    If you're having trouble getting access to an outdoor movie, you can ask the people showing the movie to go to this particular blog so that they can learn for themselves what they need to do.  

Enjoy the movies!

Dana

Information from volunteers

Here's an interesting article about how technology was used to communicate information about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/first-hand-acco.html

It's very interesting that Wikipedia was used to provide frequently updated information about these attacks. Wikipedia allows numerous volunteers to collaborate on entries, so the potential to collect useful information quickly could be almost unlimited.

The downside of using volunteers, however, is that they may inadvertently help provide useful, real-time information to the terrorists themselves. Wired also has an article about how the terrorists used different gadgets to see how the world was responding to them and changed what they were doing:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/the-gagdets-of.html

I think that the websites of large local newspapers will still be the best place to look for (scrutinized) information from local residents, though unfortunately, not all may be set up to do that. (The Marin Independent Journal, for example, didn't do that during such calamities as the massive oil spill last year, though the San Francisco Chronicle did.) Web sites of television stations unfortunately tend to use uncaptioned videos without transcripts, so they're not as helpful at communicating accessible emergency information on their web sites for people with hearing loss or people who aren't native speakers of English.

Local emergency notification systems

I've personally found very useful the emergency email alerting systems that were implemented by the City of Rockville and Montgomery County, MD. Both governments contracted with RoamSecure to provide emergency email alerts about local emergencies and severe traffic alerts to subscribers via user-selected email, cell phone and pager addresses. The service is free for any subscriber, although cell phone and pager networks may charge a fee for each message received from the service. I've received a variety of different messages using this service, such as warnings about potential tornadoes and ice storms, and severe traffic alerts.

Today I visited the RoamSecure.com website, looked at their list of customers, and to my surprise, found that it's also apparently up and running in San Francisco and San Mateo. I had been pestering San Francisco and Marin County (where Sausalito is) to use an emergency email alerting system. Marin County is listed as a customer but doesn't appear to have their system operative yet. I signed up for the SF system since I play volleyball in the city and Sausalito is so close to it that I'll want to know about disasters there anyway.

I looked for information about how deaf and hard of hearing people in San Diego might have gotten notified about needing to evacuate. The City of San Diego implemented a new reverse 911 system recently, and apparently, everyone with special needs in the city should have registered on it to communicate what their needs were, but the web site did not provide specific guidance about how to elaborate on this. Reverse 911 can be a real problem for hard of hearing people, most of whom don't have TTYs, as they can have great trouble understanding rapidly recorded messages and not even have a clue what the call is about. The voice of the person calling needs to be very, very clear, but too often people sound strained and rushed, and if there's no option to repeat the message, it can be completely unintelligible to hard of hearing people. With respect to the sign-up page, I personally would have preferred knowing whether I had the option to receive text messages to my cell phone and email accounts in addition to a phone call (a phone call would actually be more effective at waking me up than my cell phone would be since the cell phone can't generate a loud enough low frequency ring for me, and if I could hear the call was about an emergency, I could check my cell phone, email, and local television station).

Since the San Diego Reverse 911 sign-up web page asked for email addresses, personnel might have followed up on all the special needs, but I wouldn't have a lot of confidence in their follow-through. Rather, there should have been a built-in option for email alerts, an option to check whether the phone was a TTY or a single-line CapTel or VCO phone (which need to be called through a special toll-free number), and an option for special communication, like clear speech from a person with low-pitched speech or Spanish, Chinese, or another language. (With so many immigrants in San Diego, it was especially important to be sensitive to the need for communication in Spanish.) It doesn't appear to me that the city or the company who created this sign up page consulted with people expert in hearing loss and language needs.

The flaws of the San Diego sign-up page can be seen at:
http://www.sandiego.gov/ohs/reverse911/index.shtml

I looked for more information and found an article criticizing the city's purchase of this reverse 911 system compared to San Diego County's Internet-based mass notification system, which is supposed to provide a variety of different alerts:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070923/news_1m23reverse.html

Unfortunately, I couldn't find out any sign-up information for this system, even at:
http://www.sdcountyemergency.com/

(However, that web site contains a lot of useful links that could be very helpful to evacuees.)

I've heard that the Reverse 911 system in San Diego didn't apparently appropriately notify deaf people there; it's not clear whether this is because they hadn't signed up for the new system or their information hadn't been processed yet, or because there was no email notification system in place yet. I'd love to hear from any deaf or hard of hearing San Diegans about their experience with the reverse 911 system there (which is required by the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to be accessible to people with disabilities).

Still another resource is the Emergency Email Network at:
http://www.emergencyemail.org/

I've used this resource for years, but many local emergency management agencies don't send information to it, so it doesn't necessarily provide information about local, non-weather emergencies. It does tend to send weather information and other large area notices, though.

For more information about other vendors of emergency notification technology, see the following directory from Gallaudet University's Technology Assistance Program 's 2005 conference:

http://tap.gallaudet.edu/Emergency/Nov05Conference/EmergencyReports/directory.pdf

Snapshot of KPBS Google Map

Thought I'd show a picture of the Google Map created by KPBS.org as it will probably disappear at some point. I like their selection of icons and their shaded areas showing the estimated burn area and evacuation areas; they also provide a great deal more information when you click on the icons (which you can only do on the actual interactive map, not on the picture above). The interactive map designed by KPBS can currently be seen via the "Interactive Map" featured on the left side of the page at http://www.kpbs.org/fires

Southern California Fires

I've been following the wildfires in Southern California and learned that KPBS.org has been doing a good job using two different Internet resources, Twitter and Google Map:

http://www.kpbs.org/fires

Seems like a good idea to sign up for a Twitter account now just in case it's difficult to do that by cell phone later. Once you've got a Twitter account, then you can sign up for alerts from relevant Twitter pages. Go directly to the KPBS link to their own Twitter page to see an example of the kinds of messages that could potentially be sent to your cell phone if you signed up to a similar web page.

I think how KPBS used the tools of Google Map is also very good. They used different icons that were easy to see, and also sketched out areas estimated to be affected by certain fires in San Diego County. (Thanks to Cheryl Heppner of NVRC for emailing me about KPBS's Google map.)

With over 900,000 people having been evacuated, obviously there are thousands of deaf and hard of hearing people who needed to know how to get access to information like this. Hopefully we can all learn from disasters like this to improve the dissemination of information for other disasters and come up with a systematic way of organizing these information resources so we don't have to spend hours looking all over the Internet for them.

Potential uses of this blog

A major reason why I'm starting this blog is because I'm interested in technology to disseminate information before, during and after disasters. Even this particular blogging utility is useful. Bloggers with cell phones can use blogger.com to communicate about any disasters that they might happen to get involved with. For example, I can send pictures or email from my cell phone to this blog, and I think it would be great to get more people with camera phones who live in high-risk areas to set up their own blogs for this purpose as well.

Before, during and after Hurricane Katrina (and Rita) impacted the U.S. mainland in 2005, I was very interested in how information was being communicated to the public, even though I wasn't personally affected by the hurricanes. Being severely hard of hearing and single, I can't reliably understand radio communication, and I wanted to understand how I would be able to get important information for my own survival if I happened to be in an area that was struck by a disaster. Even though I have had a web-enabled phone for several years, few emergency management agencies have developed a system for providing text messages about resources and other information for individual residents. Many deaf and hard of hearing people in the areas hit by Katrina and Rita couldn't directly find out about what was going on and what they needed to do even though the technology had long been available to send out information via email to any wireless devices they had.

After Katrina and Rita hit, I found that newspaper web sites in the area often seemed to be better about providing accessible local information about resources than other web sites. It's their job to provide written news, after all, and to do this quickly. One newspaper posted a link to a blogger who provided information about what was available in his local area, like gas stations that still had gasoline and a bar that had the facilities to serve hot food despite the power outage. Television web sites relied too much on videos that weren't captioned, and government web sites weren't flexible enough to provide the variety of details needed.

I think we all need to advocate for emergency management agencies to be MUCH more proactive about planning how information will get out to the public before, during and after disasters. Currently they rely far too much on radio stations to provide information, but there's a lot of problems with using just radio in addition to audio information not being accessible to people with hearing loss. (Radio information is "push" information only whereas people need to be able to "pull" down or at least subscribe to the specific information they need.) I think emergency management agencies need to involve the media and a variety of stakeholders, like organizations of people with disabilities and other special needs, in developing a variety of ways to obtain, coordinate and disseminate reliable information, and in communicating to the public how they can get critical information before, during and after disasters. However, most emergency management systems seem to be so focused on addressing the needs of emergency response personnel that they neglect the information needs of the public.

Let me emphasize: lack of information before, during, and after disasters can kill people. Imagine not knowing where the nearest accessible triage center is when one has a life-threatening medical emergency, you can't get through to anyone by phone, and you can't get to the hospital because the overpass has collapsed but you had no way of learning what roads were closed and thus what roads were still open. Imagine there's an out-of-control fire approaching your home and you didn't hear that the road you usually take to get out is blocked and you get stuck on that road along with thousands of other people who also didn't know the road was closed (true story). Imagine not hearing that you shouldn't drink the water because it may have been contaminated (true story). Imagine all the time wasted by first responders because of the lack of intelligent planning for information dissemination, and the consequent impact on lives and property. Planning for more effective dissemination of information needs to happen now.

If you happen to know of useful information technology for emergencies, please share your knowledge below!

Ducks at King Farm

Happened across these ducks very properly crossing the street in single file at the King Farm development in Rockville, MD. Captured this photo with my Treo 600 and sent the photo to go.blogger.com.