Education and Advocacy Under the CCAC Umbrella

Greetings:

A short report about  education and advocacy now being done also with CaptionMatch, the newest  spoke on the CCAC wheel for the CCAC mission.

The CaptionMatch website and system is still in “beta” – being tested and developed further – with your feedback (thank you) – and also being used well so far, by a few.

It’s encouraging, and at the same time, we wonder if many more of you “users” (consumers, hearing or not, deaf or not) and providers (of any sort of captioning) might want to try it soon. What questions do you have?

CaptionMatch is a clearinghouse where anyone can place a “request” for captioning, and it will be seen (anonymously) by providers who are registered in the system because they like the idea of supporting CCAC activities, and have time for some new captioning/cart work. You define what sort of captioning you need and when, and advance planning is really important (weeks and months please, though some requests can be handled very quickly, even within a few days).

There’s a lot of education and advocacy going on there, by me and by users of the system. (CaptionMatch is a clearinghouse only, it’s not a captioning company). We’ve chosen to put time into this as a different way to advocate, and hopefully raise some revenue for the CCAC. The goal is the CCAC goal – to find captioning inclusion where none exists now.

We seem to be hearing from mainly “first time” users – folks who are introducing captioning or cart to new situations – new conferences, new video producers, and others. This is very gratifying – as here in the CCAC for three years, to offer encouragement and support for captioning inclusion. We welcome and also need more of you to try it as an option. We are not aiming to take you away from your long-time captioners  - not at all. We hope they too will register and use the CaptionMatch system to benefit CCAC’s volunteer captioning advocacy projects  - to help the CCAC continue.

The website is http://captionmatch.com - check it out, e.g. the educational examples, the FAQ page, and then if you have questions, send them along here or off the forum to me or info@captionmatch.com. .

Lauren

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http://ccacaptioning.org - Volunteer Captioning Advocates

http://captionmatch.com - Consumers and Captioners Supporting CCAC Mission

Let’s Caption the World!

 

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Air Travel Access with Captioning

CCAC members are talking about added advocacy for access with Captioning for all air travels, such as the items below.

You’re invited to get involved, here, in CCAC membership discussions, on social media, or anyplace that works for you. Talk to us.

1. Some airlines do and many don’t -Captioning for Films shown on board.

2. Some do and some don’t have captioning for TV programs playing on board.

3. Announcements on board by crew need real time captioning.

4. Announcements in all airports also need real time captioning.

See all the information now on this CCAC webpage, and send us more soon: http://ccacaptioning.org/captioning-transportation/

 

HTTP://CCACAPTIONING.ORG

NEED CAPTIONING OR CART: VISIT HTTP://CAPTIONMATCH.COM

EMAIL CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.CO

 

December is the Captioning Season!

Smile – and talk to family and friends about our needs for quality captioning every day please.

However you plan to enjoy the holidays, understand that millions of people cannot “hear” a full conversation due to deafness or hearing loss – a most common human experience. One in five persons, anyplace, has a hearing loss and may be deaf.

For all, captioning is our language too. Real time captions for comedy shows, for special family gatherings also. Captioning for entertainments, e.g. movies, theaters and puppet shows!

Turning on captioning on the television if all are watching a favorite film during the holidays is an excellent idea. Watching on the Internet? See if there are captions/subtitles available please – and if not, contact them to ask for it (with thanks for your advocacy sincerely).

Arranging for a CART/STTR provider (with you or “remotely via the computer”) to offer full speech-to-text for the holiday  party is another choice.

Going to church? Do you care to hear the sermon and do you want all there to hear enough too? Talk to them about captioning  services -it can be done with good planning.

Noisy restaurants? Does everyone participate? Or does it seem that some fade away and look like they want to crawl under the table? Bringing captioning into many social situations is a major challenge. We read wonderful reports about a restaurant in California for sign language users. Super! Yet most millions with hearing loss, and even some deaf, do not use sign language. We live in the hearing world, are connected to our circles of family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues in the hearing world, and want to “communicate” with everyone in these circles – we speak, and use captioning.

Joy to the world with captioning for all.

http://ccacaptioning.org – we appreciate any donations this season, or anytime; of any size, it helps cover the costs of captioning advocacy; ccac has no paid staff; there is a secure donation system online

ls/ccac

HEALTHCARE – ACCESS VITAL VIA CAPTIONING

Love reading this blog – re-posting:

http://limpingchicken.com/2012/11/29/helen-cherry-a-case-for-remote-captioning-in-the-nhs/#comment-3260

CCAC published this article also last year or before – please read and join the movement:

http://ccacaptioning.org/cart-captioning-healthcare/

 

Health care is a matter of life and death.

ccacaptioning.org – the place or captioning advocacy – all volunteers

captionmatch.com – the place to ask for captioning anonymously – gather proposals from providers

Where Do You Need Captioning?

Q: Where do YOU need CAPTIONING? (outside of television, movies, and internet videos please) – Tell us here!

Life goes on, every day – where do you wish you had real time speech-to-text easy to read, full quality? at home? at work? in school? at conferences? and ? Talk to us now. We know we all want it for entertainment and videos online too. Let’s talk about all the other places we want equal communication access via captioning. Your answers?

Reminder: Join the CCAC also – go to our web, easy to do: http://ccacaptioning.org
Add your support, your voice, or your advocacy!

CCAC Captioning/CART Technology Information

We invite some more feedback or additions to this document – hardware and software used by people providing captions! and CART!

Take a look here: http://ccacaptioning.com/CCAC%20CART%20Captioning%20Technologies%20Database%20January%202012.htm

And email us or comment here on the blog, why not? A few of us put quite some time into this, is it helpful to anyone? Can you pass it along? Other ideas?

cheers,

ls/ccac

CCAC – Join from our web, free: http://www.ccacaptioning.org

Email – ccacaptioning@gmail.com

Love captions? Guest bloggers invited!

Subtitles – Sous-Titres – The Word Gets Around

We are so happy to see this French subtitled news today!
Many of the videos and information shared online by some “deaf” groups do not include captioning yet. We always suggest inclusion of quality captioning (subtitles/sous-titres) is a very good idea!

Where Are You Using CART? Delivering it?

 

Know what CART is?

Real time captioning – on site – for you – where and when you need it – to be included, to understand what everyone is saying.

It’s done by a professional – not done by the machine .

There is a machine – yet the provider’s training goes beyond typing – way beyond – with a steno machine – plus added skills.

Those using it (at work, in school, at meetings, at conferences) don’t shout about it enough. Talk to us soon.

ls/ccac

CART = communication access real time translation

CART is described by others as transcription, interpreting, computer-assisted, and more.

CART is called STTR in the UK (speech to text reporting).

CART is an awkward acronym – under discussion in a few places.

CART is the service name now for modifications and newer systems also (e.g. some re-speaking systems, even computer generated text). This is controversial.

Nuance – We Want To Talk To You

Nuance – what a great name for a company. We’ve been reading about you for years, and in the news, this article now:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/technology/nuance-communications-wants-a-world-of-voice-recognition.html?_r=1&hp

We encourage these projects and especially if they also lead to much more QUALITY speech-to-text systems – full VERBATIM and also REAL TIME  - for so many millions of us who are deaf, deafened, have hearing loss, or use captioning for everyday communications for many other good reasons.

Being able to train a system to one’s own voice, and then talk to so many different machines may be fun, useful too!

At the same time, we urgently need accurate speech to text systems – we need improvements as soon as your company, Google, and others can provide.

We doubt that these systems will replace human professional caption providers anytime soon, and yet…

Speaking for one person only here – half of me wants you to try a whole lot harder. And the other half of me knows how important real time professionals are for so many of us now, in so many everyday situations, and will remain vital also. Captioning is our language too – we want it universally, so there should be room for all professionals and all systems too.

Nuance – tell us how we can help. We hope to talk with you Nuance, in Burlington, MA, USA one day soon. We would like to learn a lot more, and tell you about the CCAC also.

ls/ccac

CCAC Captions Voice of America Video

Action request from consumer and action from provider members in the CCAC – what a great community.

The story about this advocacy and action will be in the April CCAC newsletter, yet here’s a preview of what all online videos need to do:

http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/CBSCvC0yGKSn/en/261160/

It’s especially irksome when videos about deafness, hearing, hearing loss, and related, do not cc their content.

Not so hard to do, not so costly either, really, you are worth it!