Somewhat Silent

Hi. I’m a Sara too, but, to not confuse things, I will go by Saj or Saje or Sajego
I got here from a comment in hohprof’s journal. It looks like a nice place, so I’m hoping I may join you.

I’m 26, living in Washington, DC, trying to get a new job, really hoping for a research engineering position at Gallaudet… something I never thought I’d do. I wasn’t deaf until I was 14. And only recently did I decide I would enjoy focusing my work on helping deaf people… more than I enjoy working for the military/government/defense department. That’s for sure.

Somewhere in the last 3.5 years I’ve learned to sign. I wouldn’t call myself fluent, but I can communicate as well with sign as I can with my hearing (50/50 ha!). I give most of the credit to a deaf co-worker who loves to chat. I feel bad leaving him behind in NJ where I used to live. I know how having someone to sign and talk to and be a true friend at your job just makes a huge difference. I don’t have anyone like that here in DC either.

I wanted to comment a bit on how hearing people criticize our support sometimes. There is a service (free to US federal employees, not sure how much for other people) at http://www.fedrcc.us that provides real time captioning, CART, for telephone conference calls. Basically you schedule your meeting (48 hours ahead) and the captionist will call in. Then you go to a website and can read her text from the meeting.

I’ve used it 3 or 4 times maybe. The website software isn’t that great. It depends on javascript and is hard on the server. When it works it’s really great. Just like using CART in person. Words are 95% accurate and show up a couple of seconds behind the speaker. You can save the transcript at the end too.

Every time I use this service, my co-workers ask me to get them the transcript so they’ll have a record. Then, they complain about how bad it is. It doesn’t show anyones names (how would the captionist know that?). It doesn’t always have the right words (last time the captionist used “naif C” instead of NAVSEA). Some things are incorrectly recorded. And other complaints.

What they don’t get, or appreciate, is how much it really DOES help me! There is no way that I’d be able to hear and follow a conference call just by dialing in. there is also no way a normal relay operator could keep up. No one ever wants to take notes for me… or even fill me in after. It could be weeks before they get any official meeting minutes sent out, if they even bother to send them. They should at least appreciate that I’m getting a service that would normally cost over $100 an hour for free.

This doesn’t really bother me too much though, because I know how much it helps me, even if it isn’t perfect. I can at least follow along and have some idea what was discussed.