Weekly world news
- “Council move upsets deaf TV watchers”:
After seven years of faithfully recording every word spoken for instant captioning on the screen, the council has dropped the contract of Jane James, who has her own firm, Captioning Professional, and by all accounts was doing a fine job, no complaints…. It was a city move to save money. By going on the cheap, the council will save $65,000. That sounds good unless you’re deaf. Then it’s obvious Oakland’s deaf community takes the hit.
The council went out to bid on captioning services and a new contract has been given to Rapidtext of Newport Beach, which records meetings by “remote listening.”
Rapidtext puts listeners on the phone when the council meets, usually on Tuesday nights. The listeners work from their homes and can be plugged into the meetings from any city in the country, including the East Coast. The firm’s base is in Newport Beach. This is not a “Buy Oakland” deal.
As for the service, the listeners don’t know who is speaking when they record the comments so the verbatim words are not attributed on the screen to particular council members. Not yet, anyway.
Last week, the screen showed little arrows to indicate there was a change in speakers. But viewers didn’t know who the speakers were.
James watched the new system and said there were many gaffs, including one identifying a city staffer as a council member. At the same meeting, the microphone went dead. “They lost all of what was said during that rather long time,” said James. [...]
Switching from the Captioning Professionals contract for $150,160 to Rapidtext of Newport Beach for $90,000 will save $65,000. [...]
But James says the committee shouldn’t consist of only deaf folks because they won’t be able to discern if the spoken words are accurate.
“This committee will be like a blind man being an art critic,” says James. ¶
- “Censor Scooby-Doo? Words fail”:
The Bush administration has decided that people with bad hearing have bad judgment, too, and need special guidance from the federal government.
So the U.S. Department of Education is declaring about 200 television programs inappropriate for closed-captioning and denying federal grant requests to make them accessible to the hearing-impaired.
The department made its decisions based on the recommendations of a five-member panel. Who the five members are, only the government seems to know, and it isn’t saying. But the shows they censored suggest a perspective that is Talibanesque. [...]
“They’ve suddenly narrowed down the definition of those three kinds of programming without public input,” says Kelby Brick, director of the NAD’s law and advocacy center. “Basically, the department wants to limit captioning to puritan shows. The department wants to ensure that deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals are not exposed to any non-puritan programming. Never mind that the rest of the country is allowed to be exposed.” [...]
The Department of Education is refusing to reveal the names of the panel members whose opinions determined the caption grants and also won’t disclose the new guidelines. By every appearance, the government has changed its definition of what constitutes a caption-worthy program. But it’s keeping the new rules secret.
“They apparently used a panel of five individuals and then made the censorship decisions based on the individuals’ recommendations,” Mr. Brick says. “We have found the identity of one of the panelists. This individual tells us that he never knew he was on such a panel and that his views would be used for censorship. No panel was convened. The five panelists were contacted individually and separately.” ¶
- Watch CNN at the library. Why, it’s almost like being at home!
A 42-inch Sampo [!] plasma television was recently added the lounge area of the Java City Café. The television cost the library about $3,000…. “Academic libraries are no longer just warehouses for print collections,” [a functionary] said. “It’s not enough to provide only books and newspapers anymore.”
Library policy requires the television to be tuned to CNN, which underscores its function as an information source, Pitschmann said. He said the library is open to changing to another news source if students say they’d prefer another channel.
“Obviously we can’t just allow someone to walk up to the television and change the channel,” he said.
The volume on the set is muted, requiring the viewer to read the closed captioning subtitles. Pitschmann said turning the volume up isn’t an option since people study in the area and because the volume may disturb adjacent study areas in the building.
Students expressed mixed reaction to the television, some saying they find it beneficial and others saying library money could have been better spent.
“It’s better if you can actually hear it,” said Jennifer Lee, a freshman biology major.
“Because it’s silent, you don’t catch everything [the newscasters] say,” said Laurie Crunk, a senior art history major. ¶
- “Captioning lures court reporters”: I wish non-experts would rid themselves of the psychosis that all captioning everywhere is done by court reporting. I know some people want that to come true because it’s ever so much cheaper, but let’s not encourage them. And who “clicks” on a TV menu? And is the captioner’s job really to provide the bare minimum? Again, let’s not give people ideas here.
An estimated 500 people around the country, most working out of their homes, type the captions…. The government has been phasing in closed captioning since 2000, and is requiring that it be offered to virtually all new programming beginning Jan. 1, 2006. [...]
Years ago, people who wanted to see broadcast captions had to buy devices to hook up to their television sets. Televisions now can automatically bring in captions, unless the user clicks on a menu to turn off the feature.
Skilled real-time reporters willing to work at least 40 hours a week can make $100,000 a year and up, leaders in the field say. Salaries can average around $60,000 to $65,000, DiLorenzo said. [...]
The transcriber can type “unintelligible” or “inaudible,” use a phonetic spelling or skip a name in favor of a general reference to a player, for instance.
If they fall behind, they eliminate less-essential parts of a sentence and summarize. While a court reporter must produce a verbatim translation, a captioner is supplying just enough narration for the listener to keep up with the images. ¶