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From: 34AEJ7D@CMUVM.BITNET (Bill Gorman)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Live Captioning
Message-ID: <15066@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 19 Oct 90 04:24:48 GMT
Sender: news@bunker.UUCP
Reply-To: 34AEJ7D@CMUVM.BITNET (Bill Gorman)
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Fidonet: Silent Talk Conference

Index Number: 11196

Here's a little tidbit from another list that some of the HI members of
this echo might find of interest.
----------------------------Original message----------------------------

|Today's EDUCOM keynote speech, by former President Jimmy Carter was
|open-captioned for the hearing impaired.  The big-video display in
|the auditorium showed a textual representation of the speech as
|Carter spoke. This was provided by "11-Alive," an Atlanta
|television station.
|
|The system must have used some kind of voice-recognition algorithm,
|because no human typist that I know could have kept up with the
|speaker at times.  The weakness of the voice-recognition system was
|made painfully obvious to attendees, when those with the ability to
|hear the presentation noticed substitutions like:
|
|"man well" noriega, "wak dem iks" for academics, "oath yope yam"
|for Ethiopia, "Jap neens" for Japanese, "My Robe by" N Nairobi for
|"Ken Yeah" for Kenya, "Home Jean yes" for homogeneous.
|
|Carter's speech was thoughtful and moving (he talked about
|academia's moral responsibilities to the third world), but the
|seriousness of the speech was undercut by the occasional giggle
|from the audience.
|
|Later in the speech, human control seemed to be asserted a bit
|more, and "another country" was frequently substituted for the name
|of a third-world country, but Carter must have been most puzzled
|when he explained that the Carter Foundation was nonpartisan, and
|that "Prominent Republicans" worked closely with him on every major
|project.  It was presented to the hearing-impaired (and to the rest
|of us) as "Prominent Rubble Cans."  Of course, the audience broke
|into laughter, and I suspect he still doesn't know why.
|
|I'm a strong supporter for appropriate adaptive technology, but a
|low-tech solution (an ASL interpreter) would have been less
|distracting and reached many (though not all) of the
|hearing-impaired.