On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 15:39 +0200, Nadav Har'El wrote: > On Tue, Mar 21, 2006, Omer Zak wrote about "Re: Recording the Lecture [was > Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" > on 26 March]]": > > However, introduction of audio recordings, without immediately > > accompanying them with textual transcripts, has the effect of > > disfranchising me and other deaf software developers, making us less > > human, less valuable than you hearies. In the long range, this can > > adversely affect also our being able to be employed (or get freelance > > projects) and earn money. > > Omer, while I feel your pain, I fail to understand how this is any different > from what happens in real-life presentation, where you DO NOT have transcripts > of the talk, just the slides that accompany them.
I can (if I choose to attend the presentation) bring with me an interpreter or a notetaker. This is costly and I would be happy to eliminate the cost, but it is another war to be fought at another time. Deaf people visiting the Web site holding the recording of past presentations do not have this option. > If you already are used to > somehow understanding real-life presentations (e.g., by reading the slides > and asking the person next to you for clarifications), This is not an option. It is like expecting wheelchaired people to ask for help climbing stairs to reach places which they want to, instead of installing elevators and ramps. Nowadays it is not acceptable to expect people with disabilities to ask for help to overcome roadblocks presented by inaccessible surroundings. Help may not be available or competent or be delivered by patient&cheerful people (not preoccupied with their own problems) precisely at the moment they need the help. > can't you understand > recorded presentations (which are accomapnie with slides) in a similar > manner? No, my hearing is not good enough. If I buttonhole an hearing person to transcribe for me the presentation, that person needs to be sufficiently fluent in the subject matter to do a reasonably good job (by the way, some people had the experience of a typist not fluent with the subject matter when they volunteered to edit the transcripts which my typist prepared from August Penguin 4; the amount of work required was too big for them and they produced nothing at the end). > I agree with you that we should do whatever possible to not add additional > burdens to deaf people, but there's no point in pretending that there won't > be things that will be useful only for hearing people. Similarly, all software > that deals with music, mp3 playing, and so on, is only of use to hearing > people - but I don't suppose you say we should ban that as well... Get real, this is a lecture with subject matter which has textual representation. Not a concert. Not even a lecture about computer-generated music. If you plan to hold a lecture about computer-generated music, large part of which will be to demonstrate all those computer-generated sounds, I hereby declare that for that particular lecture, I am not expecting a textual transcript. > > This is similar to the effect on the deaf of introduction of telephones > > in the latter part of 19th century. Before telephones, the deaf were > > almost equal to the hearing. However, telephones put a large distance > > between the hearing and the deaf. Only in recent years, did this gap [... snipped ...] > By the way, a different way to look at it is that before telephones, the > *blind* had a very hard time because communication was done through letters > and telegrams, and the telephone was a blessing to them. The blind had helluva of a time from the time the telephone was invented until MS-Windows 3.1. Now the blind are playing catchup, and I support their efforts (see other E-mail messages from me, and see the accessibility lectures which I was involved with - to see that I try to help people with all kinds of disabilities). But empowering the blind does not compensate for disfranchising the deaf. > In other words, > each new medium is a blessing for one part of the population, and all-in- > all is a blessing to everyone because now everyone can use one of these > medias to communicate (the blind can use the phone, the deaf can still > write letters). The deaf and blind shouldn't lament the fact that they > can't use one of the two media, but rather be happy that they can use > the other one... At least, this is my opinion. Provided that the other media is available. In the case of the lecture recordings, there will be no "other media" unless we solve the problem which I have raised. > > 3. The solution which I suggest is as follows: > > After the lecture is recorded, make the recording available only to > > volunteers, each of whom is to agree to transcribe say 5-minute or > > 10-minute segment of the lecture, in exchange for early access to the > > lecture and for giving them credit for transcribing it. Once the > > transcribing work is done, make the audio recording and the textual > > transcription available together to the Web surfing world. > > [If the lecture is in English, the transcribers can first run > > speech-to-text software on it and then manually fix its mistakes.] > > This is a great idea. Now it's up to you: round up the volunteers and > start distributing work! Why should I give up my own life and spend a lot of time on those recordings, if the mechanism which I suggested - to ask the first 6-12-20 readers to volunteer to transcribe stuff - would solve the problem of recruiting volunteers? All it requires is that organizers of the lectures agree to enforce this. After all, you need one hour to listen to one hour long lecture. Please donate additional 15 minutes of your time to transcribe 3 minutes from the lecture (assigned by the organizer). I have a life, and I do not want to spend too much of my time on wars to make things accessible. I want to have also time to simply enjoy life, to enjoy reading those interesting lectures, to develop software based upon ideas from those lectures, etc. > > 4. Maybe there is another solution of which I did not think? > > The best thing to do is to write a Hebrew speech-to-text software! > I'm not saying it is easy (very far from it...) but it's the best > thing for the long run. Any takers for a project for developing Free Software based Hebrew speech to text system? I do not have the relevant special training and am now working on another project, so I am not taking the Hebrew ASR project up at the moment. > My belief (which I outlined on this list about > a year ago) is that in the future, speech interfaces will be much more > common than they are today, and free software will absolutely need > text-to-speech and speech-to-text implementations. I expect software to always have also text I/O capabilities, not to have a regression of dropping text I/O capabilities. This is not only for the deaf but also for the mute and for noisy offices and the like. P.S.: In some enlightened countries, it is illegal for institutions to make inaccessible Web sites. As far as I know, this is not yet the situation in Israel. But it will probably be the situation also here in the future. Putting a lecture recording on a Web site without accompanying textual transcription is making some information on that Web site inaccessible. Please cooperate with this. You will be thankful for this if you happen to be one of the 40% who are destined to lose their hearing by age 80; or due to accident or illness at earlier age. http://israblog.nana.co.il/blogread.asp?blog=150892 is the blog of a woman who lost her hearing when she was teenager. She confessed that before she lost her hearing, she did not understand the point of subtitles in TV programs. After losing her hearing they became painfully important for her. --- Omer -- Delay is the deadliest form of denial. C. Northcote Parkinson My own blog is at http://tddpirate.livejournal.com/ My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone. They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which I may be affiliated in any way. WARNING TO SPAMMERS: at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
