Realtime live captions support a broader range of attendees at university and college-hosted events like classes, sports events, guest lectures, theatre performances and student commencements at a more cost-effective price, according to UniversityBusiness.com.
The problem with using ASL as a blanket solution for [deaf students] is that many hard-of-hearing students don’t know sign language. Now hearing-impaired students can see real-time captioning of spoken events.
Uptick In Students Choosing Live Captioning
About three hard-of-hearing students for every one deaf student are counted in the US and likely to use realtime captioning – CART – services (source: Hard of Hearing Students in Postsecondary Settings: A Guide for Service Providers – U.S. Department of Education and the Postsecondary Education Consortium at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; 2007).
One mistaken assumption in the article is that all deaf students use sign interpreters (they do not), with hard-of-hearing students preferring note-taking or CART services and transcripts.
With better literacy from infant hearing and spoken language intervention, virtually all deaf students will start to choose speech-to-text for their high school and/or college education.
Captioning Is Universal Design
Alex Axelsson, assistive technology manager at Oregon State University, confirms that realtime captioning benefits a broader population beyond people with hearing difficulties:
Captioning provides a great level of universal design due to the fact that it’s beneficial to everyone. If you are studying in the library and you cannot have sound, captioning makes the content accessible to you. If you are watching a video in a loud environment where you cannot hear the content, captioning makes that accessible to you.
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