Educators, speech therapists and healthcare workers who use Skype, will like this news. Skype has developed its Translator beta tool to remove spoken-language barriers between different nationalities (and shared-nationalities, in the case of people with hearing issues). English and Spanish are the first two languages supported by Skype Translator, which uses machine-learning to achieve smarter outcomes
Students at Loyola University, Maryland are captioning live sports events to gain critical work experience and enable the university to deliver on its campus-wide accessibility goals. Read: Loyola students to provide live captioning for athletics events Ironically, the routine glitches in YouTube’s auto-captions service led the university to hire a student volunteer team to caption its official videos. From there, the
A new app, Transcence, is intended to give deaf people access to spoken dialogue among friends or colleagues who don’t know sign language, without using an interpreter. Read: A Smartphone-Based App That Lets You Converse With Deaf People Potential users wanting to test the app can register their interest at the Transcence website for when it exits private beta
A young dancer who’s deaf, wrote a review of the game, “Dance Central Spotlight” with Kinect, with several accessibility tips for developers of gaming interfaces. Specifically, Video games are not excluding [people who have hearing issues] with music-based games, but are… providing a visualization of music that can bring music to deaf and hard of hearing gamers in
Fans of real-time captions weren’t short of news recently, with three developments from real-time classroom captions, to life-with-subtitles apps on smartphones and on Google Glass: Ai-Media Firstly, UK-based captioning firm Ai-Media announced backing from Nesta Impact Investments to develop its high-quality live captioning service for students with different learning challenges, while giving teachers real-time feedback
Closed captions on TV shows in the US, are regulated by new FCC (Federal Communications Commission) controls since March 2014. The four critical elements are: accuracy, synchronization, completeness, and placement. The accuracy clause means TV stations must give captioners speakers’ names in advance, a challenge since captioners are not paid for prep time. Tips for synchronising content
Open-source video platform, Kaltura, has launched a new accessibility suite with captioning, transcription and translation services, in-video and cross-library search, deep-linking options, metadata and keyword extraction. Kaltura launches REACH accessibility suite REACH, designed for language-learners and people with hearing issues, enables educational entities, workplaces, media firms and service providers to extend video services while meeting compliance
With today’s classrooms having multiple digital data-sources, students who read live captions are challenged by room lighting or shadows, placement of units, and fitting audio-visual media screens into each student’s line of sight. Improving Caption Experiences Researchers at the University of Rochester are tackling these issues, aware that students in these classrooms with full hearing,
Anyone who requests live captions or CART (communication access in realtime) for an educational or training context, knows the pain points of (1) defining your hearing issues (2) explaining what CART is, and its benefits (3) arranging its provision and (4) establishing who actually pays for it. One blogger, Chelle George, describes in detail the
Parent attitudes are similar when teaching support hours are sought for children with extra educational needs, at mainstream schools in the UK and Ireland. This report from The Guardian defines the challenges of special needs or teaching assistants in the classroom: Read >> Relying on TA support for SEN students is false economy In the words