Access for All

by Mark P. Crossley, CSC, NAD/Mstr. V.

I guess I am one of those unique realtime captioners who is also a certified American Sign Language (A.S.L.) interpreter. Having interpreted for some 27 years, I have seen how interpreting in a variety of settings (legal, medical, educational, vocational, stage) has made a qualified difference for Deaf individuals who identify with the American Deaf Culture and use American Sign Language as their prime means of communication.

Even back when - now, this was the beginning of CART, when it was possible to use a reader/scanner device to "read" the notes across the line to Chicago, and get rudimentary and very raw notes to edit (almost hardly worth the effort and expense) - I thought that realtime captioning, if ever it could be made more portable, would enhance the lives of Deaf folks … could there be a way?

I had studied court reporting before and was quickly able to apply this to take near verbatim notes for a hard of hearing student, and turned it around in a week, and that - although not providing immediate access - was beneficial to the student. (Unlike today, being able to provide immediate notes via disk/e-mail/print right after the lecture, as well as realtime verbatim display via laptop).

Today's technology has made it possible for all persons access (not just those culturally Deaf, who use sign language interpreters, and also hard-of-hearing persons). Since a lot of what I do as a classroom realtime captioner and for workshops, seminars and public presentations, is broadcast on a large, self-lit screen, I have had comments from hearing participants, saying that the captioning helped them understand and retain information from the workshop.

With the advent of Microsoft Word, there is an outline feature that allows for verbatim notes to be reduced in an outline format, allowing Deaf students the ability to have verbatim and outline formatted notes, for studying purposes, since notetaking is impossible for them, while watching captioning. Also, Blind students have been able to take advantage of the notes, with the advent of software that takes ASCII files and reproduces them in Braille format.

Captioning has literally changed the world for more than just Deaf folks. My hearing children, at an early age, learned to read painlessly with captioning on many of the programs on television.

Also, as an ESL instructor, I have had foreign-born students of English utilize this television technology to improve their reading and speaking abilities, by turning off the sound of the TV and reading the captioning aloud.

Through direct experience as an interpreter, realtime captioner, and ESL instructor, I know that captioning has dramatically changed the lives of all persons.

It is essential that federal funding allow this service of realtime Captioning or CART to grow and continue to enhance the lives of all persons.

It is a profession that I am proud to be a part of, having been rewarded over and over again with seeing the benefits of the life-changing attributes of realtime captioning.