by Elizabeth Ralston
It has come to my attention that Miami-Dade Community College is discontinuing its CART or realtime captioning services. I used CART when I was in graduate school at the University of Michigan, and it was the most wonderful experience to be able to participate with other students in the class dialogue. I cannot stress how important CART is to many deaf or other hearing-impaired students. It not only provides word-for-word translation and notes, but also allows the student to keep up with the conversation in the classroom. Notetaking generally summarizes the gist of a conversation, but the student is left behind in the conversation. CART brings it live and in complete form to the students. Please consider what the students needs are and avoid assumptions that one service (i.e., notetaking) will work better.
If you have had an experience with captioning or CART that you would like to share, please e-mail it to Peter Wacht, pwacht@ncrahq.org, or mail it to his attention at NCRA, 8224 Old Courthouse Road, Vienna, VA 22312.