Charting Deaf Territory, Part Two
How UVa Is Managing To Accommodate a Deaf Medical Student
Contributed by Christopher Sherman Read, Accessible Technology Specialist, University of Virginia
What Has Worked Well
The Q & A with faculty is critical and we continue to conduct interactive sessions with each new group of system leaders every 6 weeks or so. It helps allay fears: Fear the instructor won’t be able to give everything the student needs; Fear of entering uncharted territory; Fear the instructor will have a lot more work to do.
(Aside: We’re fortunate to find a true champion in the curriculum director at the medical school who has been tremendous in supporting and promoting our efforts. His conviction and positive attitude has provided a leverage to inspire his instructional colleagues beyond what we could ever dream of doing.)
Key points
1. You have to instill confidence that you’ve got this handled. It’s your expertise. It’s what you do.
2. You have to impart that the goal is equal access, not extra privilege. It may require a little extra work, but Disability Services will be doing all the heavy lifting and provide support.
3. You have to encourage and appreciate the communication and cooperation. The experience is new to everybody, so the challenges are unique and the solutions will likely require group effort.
What Has Worked Less Well
Biggest Service Challenge: Audio difficulties persistently challenge uninterrupted service. Sometimes instructors don’t position the microphone properly (or use the microphone at all). Sometimes table microphones are open and student laptops interfere, causing reverberation or tinny noise. Consequently the audio can be irritating to the captionist over long periods of time.
Solutions: One solution to the audio challenge is providing an interpreter who is able to provide breaks for the transcriber when needed. The interpreter is present anyway for small group discussions and labs which are not as amenable to remote captioning. Alerting the System Leaders and Classroom Techs on-site is helpful too.
The Perfect Storm
Recently, we had what I call the Perfect Storm – everything that could go wrong went wrong. Normally, the student reads live captions on an iPad. The captionist works remotely (from Vermont) and gets an audio feed from the hard-wired classroom’s livestream on the Web. If audio troubles arise, the interpreter with medical training steps up and signs.
Here’s how it went down:
- I logged into the webstream. I could see the professor talking but I couldn’t hear any audio.
- I texted the student, interpreter and captionist, simultaneously to alert them of the situation and find out their status.
- The Interpreter was stuck in traffic due to a highway accident.
- The Remote Captionist was driving home (10 minutes away) after being locked out of the restricted university network system she happened to be using that morning. (So even if the audio was immediately fixed, she wouldn’t be available to transcribe.)
- The student was sitting patiently in the classroom, holding tight.
- I ran to the University Interpreter who amazingly happened to be available.
- She booked over to the medical school building to fill in. She happened to know something about the esoteric subject that day since her husband had taken medical classes.
- I texted the Classroom Tech and he resolved the audio issue right away.
- Within 20 minutes all the regulars were settled and back online. All was well again. Shortage of service was minimized.
- Hiccup
Other Hiccups
Hiccup: During the first month of school, last minute videos were assigned and students were being tested on the material the following day, despite being told earlier that this would be unacceptable practice. It turned out to be an oversight.
Solution: Since Closed-Captioning vendors do not offer same-day service, I recruited all available staff transcribe a portion of video. The University Interpreter offered to sign the content while the material was projected on a screen behind her. Fortunately, this occurred in August before the regular University students returned to school. Therefore, others in the office had some downtime to pitch in.
After we seamlessly pulled off that fire drill, we sent out stern messages to the medical school faculty and administrators reiterating how that exercise was a prime example of what not to do. We couldn’t guarantee that we’d have the resources to respond that way in the future. We disseminated further detailed guidelines of our expectations.
Hiccup: When Professors learned that they could correct the closed captions on their pre-recorded videos, they took the opportunity to revise – adding and deleting sentences – without considering how that would affect the synchronization process.
Solution: We drew up guidelines for the System Leaders and Support Coordinators emphasizing the goal of corrections was to edit not revise, and further explained the synchronization impact in future System Leader meetings.
Non-Issues
Other potential barriers that ultimately have not affected service include negative attitudes. Occasionally we encounter someone who believes that all the ambition and accommodation is just not feasible or justified. Listening, not arguing but thoughtfully disagreeing and turning the focus back on the student and what truly can be achieved has been helpful. Regardless of discrimination laws, who are we to deny a student the education? For all we know, he could be a future Nobel laureate.
Some worried about video copyright permissions, while others wondered how the student was going to use a stethoscope. A conversation with General Counsel, and steering the student to other Deaf doctors was an easy fix. If you can isolate concerns and address them one at a time, it completely takes the wind out of overwhelming anxiety.
When I showed this report to the student for feedback, he responded with appreciation and said, “By the way…You and everyone else make it easy for me to just focus on studying.”
Doctor, what is that? I just got a chill down my spine.
