I need your help…again!
Im having a little problem in college, Im doing well in everything but one area, and that is Art history Lectures, where it is held in a dark room, where I cant hear or lipread the lecturer, he gives me notes, but they are in his own high falutin language and I have to go home after a day long lecture and try to learn and understand them entirely on my own, because I may as well not be in the lecture at all, I dont hear a thing!!
now the college know this and are currently persuing help, and in the mean time im turning to you if ye know anything that may help me please tell me here or on my email! my overall grades in college, are excellent but im only bearly hanging on with the art history and that is an essential part of my degree !!
I lipread to a high skill level, and I have level 1 irish sign language, thing is there are no lip speakers that I know of in ireland, and I dont know if they would issue someone a terp at level 1 which is the next level up from basic, I can hold a very good casual conversation in sign, but Iv yet to hear back if they can find anyone for me! so PLEASE HELP!! drop me ideas here, please of find someone who may know 
Thank you!
January 26th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
and how good do you have to be at sign for an interpreter, is there a minimum requirement? is there a person who can combine lipspeaking with basic sign ect to accomodate my needs??
January 27th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
I think what you are looking at is some kind of ‘captioning’ system, where someone takes notes in realtime and you see them on your own screen or something. You are like me, primarily oral, good at lipreading at a cost, not that great at sign yet and needing large amounts of complex information quickly.
There are various types of captioning: palantypists which use a keyboard like court stenographers and TV subtitlers so it is phonetic and occasionally buggers up. Or there are just notetakers who can type and have a laptop next to yours (wired/wirelessly connected) where you see what is being said by reading the screen.
Realistically I think you need to be level 2-3 to use a signer properly. As someone who has level 2 I don’t feel competent enough to use a signer as the energy needed to understand it is still greater than lipreading, so I don’t learn properly either way. Hearing people don’t have to ‘process’ so much so they can spend time storing lecture material in their heads for future access.
You might be able to find someone who does ‘total communication’ which is more flexible for your needs using signed english, clear lip patterns etc - but if there aren’t many lipspeakers/terps then there probably aren’t many people who could do this.
Could you receive exemption from attending this physical lecture and have the notes at the same time, so you could go home or library and work on the notes instead of draining valuable auditory processing energy with the lectures? At least until some proper support has been worked out? I know someone who did this at the university of Cambridge for all his lectures, he got notes and worked in the library instead.
Another simple, cheap and temp solution is to find a friend who does nice notes, and get them to put a sheet of carbon paper under their notes so you get a ‘copy’. Get this ‘authorised’ by college staff - that may help having two types of notes highfalutin ones and human student ones… This should not be left as a long term solution instead of providing you with proper support (I know unis who have suggested this instead of arranging notetakers etc)
Another option might be that in addition to any of these you go through the lecturer’s notes, do your reading etc - then once a week/month have a few mins to talk to the lecturer directly and ask questions on things you think you don’t understand. The danger with this method is that HOH people often miss things, but do not know they are missing things as they appear to have everything covered. It is only during assessments and exams that it is realised that the HOH person doesn’t have the higher connections/interrelations which would allow them to get the higher marks. Sadly it is often assumed that we aren’t very bright rather than missing out on complex information.
January 27th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
lette- A lot of interpreters will supplement their sign with lip movements–see if you could get one of those? they may not be able to legally refuse to get you one as an accomodation.
But I second what Barakta said- caption ing would be ideal for you. Or get someone with a laptop to sit next to you and type what is being said real-time. The school should be able to get someone to do that for you!
January 28th, 2007 at 7:32 am
sounds good, there is a word to text system that I could get, we have them here, so ill enquire about it, other than that theres one to one tuition, which i dont think id feel very comfortable with!! well I have a meeting with my tutors on tuesday and ill she what comes of thet, thank you for your sugestions
February 5th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Greetings. I am wondering if a device such as the UbiDuo would be helpful in your situation? Maybe in addition to a notetaker, there could be someone typing the lecture for you, and the background can be reversed so you can see the letters in the dark.
Best of luck in finding a solution.