Most Useful Devices for Deaf People

[Cheetah]

A hearing dog is a mixed blessing. I used to have a hearing dog. They are great for what they are trained for. But there are times when you miss out on some things because the dog cannot go with you. For example, you might go to an amusement park, but you will either need to ask someone you trust to hold the leash while you ride or skip the rides. I was always either by myself or with my wife, so we usually just picked things to do where the dog can go with us. The other issue was ignorant/idiot people that tried to block the dog from entering public places.

Now, I don't have a hearing dog and I don't have a wife... oh boy, I wonder what that says about me???

 

[Dixie]

I doubt that Radio Shack will have a vibrating alarm clock. Or did you mean to get the cell phone from Radio Shack? Do they carry cell phones??? Obviously I haven't been to Radio Shack in many many years.

Yes, Radio Shack is very much into the cell phone business. They are authorized dealers for Verizon and AT&T. We have a Radio Shack here locally and I'm told it's one of the bigger Radio Shack stores in the area. They sell almost every electronic gadget I can think of as well as some office supplies.

I love our Radio Shack. I wonder if they sell software that will allow for real-time captioning on my laptop via voice and a small mic on the professor's desk via bluetooth connection to my laptop. I think ATU has note takers and one or two interpreters, but I would prefer real-time captioning so I don't have to try to decipher someone else's hand writing and I am not that fluent in ASL.

Nevermind - I've found out:
http://www.atu.edu/testing/accommodations.shtml

Looks like I'm on my own to figure out how to make real-time captioning happen on my computer. Phooey.

 

[DeafBadger]

I love our Radio Shack. I wonder if they sell software that will allow for real-time captioning on my laptop via voice and a small mic on the professor's desk via bluetooth connection to my laptop. I think ATU has note takers and one or two interpreters, but I would prefer real-time captioning so I don't have to try to decipher someone else's hand writing and I am not that fluent in ASL.

Looks like I'm on my own to figure out how to make real-time captioning happen on my computer. Phooey.

What my college is doing for me right now is real-time captioning.

They did not use a stand alone piece of software.

There is a real person listening to the teacher who then types it out. It shows up on my computer screen.

My college's Student Accessibility Office is providing this for me. Yours ought to as well. At your school, the department is called Disability Services. Make sure you are working with them.

I just emailed my transcriptionist to find out what their business email or website is. As soon as I hear back from them, I'll let you know, so maybe your college can get going on this.

This service was not listed on my college's list of services either. But they still put it together.

 

[Dixie]

What my college is doing for me right now is real-time captioning.

They did not use a stand alone piece of software.

There is a real person listening to the teacher who then types it out. It shows up on my computer screen.

My college's Student Accessibility Office is providing this for me. Yours ought to as well. At your school, the department is called Disability Services. Make sure you are working with them.

I just emailed my transcriptionist to find out what their business email or website is. As soon as I hear back from them, I'll let you know, so maybe your college can get going on this.

This service was not listed on my college's list of services either. But they still put it together.

So basically it is the same as a note taker only they called a transcriptionist and they type what the professor says and it shows up on my laptop? How is it connected? By USB or by bluetooth? I don't have a functioning bluetooth on my laptop (boo.) so we will have to probably do it by USB.

 

[DeafBadger]

So basically it is the same as a note taker only they called a transcriptionist and they type what the professor says and it shows up on my laptop? How is it connected? By USB or by bluetooth? I don't have a functioning bluetooth on my laptop (boo.) so we will have to probably do it by USB.

My college provides the laptop, wireless microphone, and receiver for the mic. (see picture)

The way it works is I set this up in every class. I give the mic to the teacher. The signal from the mic goes to the receiver (the thing with the antenna), and it goes into the microphone jack on the laptop.

There's software called "RT Viewer" running on my laptop. This takes the audio input from the mic and sends it over the internet to the transcriptionist. She is sitting at her computer, listening to the audio from the mic.

Then she types it out on her RT Viewer software and what she types goes out on the internet to my laptop in class. I can read it as she types it.

It's "sort of" like note taking, but different. The difference is, with a good transcriptionist, you get a real-time captioning of the class lecture.

Usually, it is captioned word for word. With note taking, you get the highlights. With real time captioning, you get pretty much everything the teacher is saying.

And they email you a copy of the transcript after class. (You can also save your own copy from the software.)

Sometimes the connection drops. During the first two weeks of school, it was dropping a lot, but the IT department solved it, so it doesn't drop anymore.

It won't tell you what the student questions are, just what the teacher says. And every transcriptionist has a different style of captioning. You can tell them to please caption more, or more detail, or whatever.

Connection: They tried doing it by wireless (not USB or bluetooth) at first. When it started dropping a lot, they switched to a wired internet connection. Wireless would still work, but a wired connection is better. It's a little faster than wireless, and there's less delay between the teacher speaking and when the words appear on the screen.

 

[DeafBadger]

More information about the software and how the system works.

http://www.minotstateu.edu/disability_services/pdf/rroc_guidebook_2006.pdf

 

[Jane B.]

So basically it is the same as a note taker only they called a transcriptionist and they type what the professor says and it shows up on my laptop? How is it connected? By USB or by bluetooth? I don't have a functioning bluetooth on my laptop (boo.) so we will have to probably do it by USB.[/QUOTE

I did a Google search for USB bluetooth adapter and turned up many sources for an adapter to add bluetooth to a laptop that doesn't have it. They are small relatively inexpensive devices that attach via your USB port. NO cords involved.

I think transcriptionist is usually assumed to be doing a similar thing to captioning maybe not word for word but not the editing that would be involved in notetaking. Not having been involved in either I am under the impression that a notetaker would be doing what a person would be for themselves in just writing down what they considered to be the important points that the lecturer gave/made. Please don't make any assumptions from what I said but use it as a starting point to ask questions as I have used neither.

 

[DeafBadger]

The problem, I've found, with wireless (and presumably bluetooth) is that there might be more connection problems, and longer delay between the speaker and the text appearing on the screen. Wireless and bluetooth is just not as fast as a physical wired connection. You can try it though. Wireless does work for me... it's just a bit slower.

 

[Dixie]

Well I think at ATU - not all classrooms and lecture halls have Internet connections in the area where students sit so I would be relying on using the WiFi from the University to connect to the Internet. I would just have to plug my laptop into a wall outlet to make sure it doesn't die on me mid-lecture.

I like this idea of RROC. However, is the transcriptionist on campus in another building or what? At ATU classes are in different buildings in different parts of campus. Like for example my 3000 level comp class is in Witherspoon Hall on the first floor, my US Government class is in Witherspoon on the third floor, my Spanish class is in Dean Hall on the second floor, my Chemistry class is in McEver Hall, and lastly my physical health and wellness class is in Brown Hall. On other days my speech class may be in Tomlinson Hall, then I may have a Lab in Carlisle Hall. That's not even a third of the total buildings on campus either.

Is this set up to where the mic beams the audio to the FM receiver and feeds that information into my laptop which sends it via an audiofile to a transcriptionist somewhere on the Internet then they type it out and sends it back to my laptop which appears on my screen? Correct, no?

 

[DeafBadger]

Well I think at ATU - not all classrooms and lecture halls have Internet connections in the area where students sit so I would be relying on using the WiFi from the University to connect to the Internet. I would just have to plug my laptop into a wall outlet to make sure it doesn't die on me mid-lecture.

I use a long wired network cable to reach the data outlet on the wall. I sit away from the wall, too. The table I use in class have power outlets built into them, so I use a power strip and plug the power for the laptop and receiver into that.

Usually, with a fully charged battery, the laptop will work through a couple of classes. But I usually try to keep it plugged into the power outlet for that reason -- to make sure it doesn't die on me during class.

I like this idea of RROC. However, is the transcriptionist on campus in another building or what? At ATU classes are in different buildings in different parts of campus. Like for example my 3000 level comp class is in Witherspoon Hall on the first floor, my US Government class is in Witherspoon on the third floor, my Spanish class is in Dean Hall on the second floor, my Chemistry class is in McEver Hall, and lastly my physical health and wellness class is in Brown Hall. On other days my speech class may be in Tomlinson Hall, then I may have a Lab in Carlisle Hall. That's not even a third of the total buildings on campus either.

The transcriptionist is in another city in my state. The transcriptionist can be anywhere in the country and it will still work.

Is this set up to where the mic beams the audio to the FM receiver and feeds that information into my laptop which sends it via an audiofile to a transcriptionist somewhere on the Internet then they type it out and sends it back to my laptop which appears on my screen? Correct, no?

Yep, that's exactly correct.

 

[Dixie]

I use a long wired network cable to reach the data outlet on the wall. I sit away from the wall, too. The table I use in class have power outlets built into them, so I use a power strip and plug the power for the laptop and receiver into that.

Usually, with a fully charged battery, the laptop will work through a couple of classes. But I usually try to keep it plugged into the power outlet for that reason -- to make sure it doesn't die on me during class.



The transcriptionist is in another city in my state. The transcriptionist can be anywhere in the country and it will still work.



Yep, that's exactly correct.

Do you use the same transcriptionist for all of your classes or do you connect to a random transcriptionist each time?

 

[DeafBadger]

Do you use the same transcriptionist for all of your classes or do you connect to a random transcriptionist each time?

Last semester I had the same two transcriptionists who each took two of my classes. This semester I have just one transcriptionist for all of my classes. It hasn't been random.

 

[Dixie]

Last semester I had the same two transcriptionists who each took two of my classes. This semester I have just one transcriptionist for all of my classes. It hasn't been random.

So you have to submit your class schedule to the captioning service and they match you to a transcriptionist that can best match your class schedule?

How do they caption a college level Spanish II class? I do know I can have testing modifications done to where instead of having a listening portion to the tests that I have 10 more reading questions or I have to answer an essay question in Spanish or something along those lines.

How do they caption a physical science course where the professor may be referring to diagrams and such on the projection screen?

 

[DeafBadger]

So you have to submit your class schedule to the captioning service and they match you to a transcriptionist that can best match your class schedule?

My contact in the Student Accessibility Office (or Disability Office) handled this for me. It sounds like she tried to make sure that the transcriptionist had some familiarity with the words used for that class.

How do they caption a college level Spanish II class? I do know I can have testing modifications done to where instead of having a listening portion to the tests that I have 10 more reading questions or I have to answer an essay question in Spanish or something along those lines.

I don't know how they would caption a college level Spanish II class. Haven't had a foreign language course captioned for me. I suppose they might try to find a transcriptionist who knows the foreign language, but that might be difficult to find. Who knows?

How do they caption a physical science course where the professor may be referring to diagrams and such on the projection screen?

In my current IT courses, there are a lot of diagrams displayed on the overhead projector. The transcriptionist captions what the teacher is saying and it's up to me to keep up and mentally "match" the words to the diagrams. I make sure I keep up on my textbook reading so the lectures and diagrams are not a complete surprise.

Hope that helps! I haven't heard back yet from my transcriptionist about the name of the company she works for.

 

[Dixie]

My contact in the Student Accessibility Office (or Disability Office) handled this for me. It sounds like she tried to make sure that the transcriptionist had some familiarity with the words used for that class.



I don't know how they would caption a college level Spanish II class. Haven't had a foreign language course captioned for me. I suppose they might try to find a transcriptionist who knows the foreign language, but that might be difficult to find. Who knows?



In my current IT courses, there are a lot of diagrams displayed on the overhead projector. The transcriptionist captions what the teacher is saying and it's up to me to keep up and mentally "match" the words to the diagrams. I make sure I keep up on my textbook reading so the lectures and diagrams are not a complete surprise.

Hope that helps! I haven't heard back yet from my transcriptionist about the name of the company she works for.

I would only imagine how difficult it would be to caption a foreign language class, especially if the transcriptionist isn't familiar with the language beyond the most commonly used phrases. However, more and more people have Spanish as their first language so maybe there is a transcriptionist out there who is very fluent in the language and can caption it for me.

As for diagrams, maybe I can write a key word down on the diagram, then in the lecture find and highlight that key word to match it up?

Obviously I wouldn't rely solely on the captioned lectures to study by. Professors don't give all their answers away in lecture and often they assign nightly reading and have quizzes on it at the beginning of the next lecture for maybe 5 points or something small.

 

[queenravenclaw]

I'll soon be getting many devices.

1)Clarity Alertmaster with door button(will literaly safe my life cuz i never hear the door)
2)Clarity Alertmaster Reciver
3)Smoke and Carbon monoxide Alarm
4)Remote visual signalling device
5)Hearing aids and streamer. I'm HOH and so having hearing aids helps but I never use the streamer. But I've had the hearing aids and streamer for almost 4 years now.

 

[whatdidyousay!]

A hearing dog is a mixed blessing. I used to have a hearing dog. They are great for what they are trained for. But there are times when you miss out on some things because the dog cannot go with you. For example, you might go to an amusement park, but you will either need to ask someone you trust to hold the leash while you ride or skip the rides. I was always either by myself or with my wife, so we usually just picked things to do where the dog can go with us. The other issue was ignorant/idiot people that tried to block the dog from entering public places.

Now, I don't have a hearing dog and I don't have a wife... oh boy, I wonder what that says about me???

My condo does not allow pets and they could not say "no' to my hearing dog.
I left my dog home if I was not able to bring to place. And do not like going to amusement parks anymore, they are too noisy.

 

[Dixie]

If you have a service animal, all you have to do is provide documentation from a doctor stating that the dog is not a pet and that it is a service animal and states the type of service the animal provides for you.

However, laws could vary in your state regarding service animals in public housing, but that's the way I understood it for the State of Arkansas.

 

[Cheetah]

Video email. It is giving the deaf the voice they deserve. Look into it.

What are you pulling here? Are you selling something? You posted an email link, not a web page link. Kind of hard to look up what you are talking about.

 

[DeafCaroline]

Yes, he's trying to sell something. "8 awesome products in 1 package".