Monday, October 22, 2012

No Internet!!

Hi there, I'm in a hotel that does not have Internet in the room and I didn't feel like going down to the lobby to write something yesterday ... right now I'm in the room I'm going to lecture in getting ready. I thought I'd let you know and, do something I don't normally do, send you to a promotional resource. A while ago I worked with Ben Drew on one small part of a larger whole - he was working on establishing on line training and has now down so. I am the instructor on the sexuality module. You can check out the resource at Open Future Learning. There is also a YouTube clip that you may want to look at to see what it's all about. One of them is me! I haven's seen it yet. Yikes you'll get to see it before me.

This is the trailer film for the sexuality module:

I will be back tomorrow with a regular blog. It's written in my mind so I want to get out. Sorry for this but I've got to go get ready.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow - what a dynamic opportunity to be involved in. Enjoyed the trailer and some YouTube. You certainly stand out - all those years of public speaking/teaching are captured. Wonderful - well done!!

Andrea S. said...

I'm pleased you're involved, but disappointed that the company doing this doesn't seem to have made their video courses accessible for deaf people via the use of closed captioning. And they don't even bother to address the issue of disability access to their course in their FAQ! Which seems kind of self-contradictory to me for a course that, among other things, has a module on promoting "rights"! What about the right of deaf people to have access to the same training as everyone else? And it isn't clear to what extent blind people have access (these do seem to consist of auditory lectures without a lot of visual content, so maybe they'd be okay, but if so that ought to be explained in the FAQ and not left to blind people to guess).

Sorry, I don't mean to rain on your parade, I just get so very fed up with seeing all of these video things on line that aren't accessible to me--even when they are produced by people who really ought to know better, ie people working on disability issues. And then don't even note or acknowledge the lack of access and thus fail to explain exactly how and when they will fix the problem and why they didn't do the research and plan well ahead for access in the first place instead of waiting for deaf people to complain after the fact. (Access is usually cheaper, or at least easier to manage and implement, if planned for and budgeted for well in advance: often the most "expensive" and troublesome part of enabling access is not the accommodation itself but the poor advance planning that resulted in accessibility being added on late in the process instead of integrating it early on when it is often cheaper or at least easier to do.)

I hate being left behind. I hate it even more when the people leaving me behind purport to be themselves supportive of disability rights.

I don't mean to dump my anger here, but this is something that has made me angry for years (not just this one company, but the fact that this is such a common place problem endemic to so many).

I'm not clear where this company is based, but given that they do business in the US they might have legal obligations to observe the Americans with Disabilities Act, which implies they might also have a *legal* obligation to enable captioning and any other disability access needed, as well as the basic moral one.

Thanks for listening.

cheeselady said...

Andrea - AMEN!!! I'm HOH, not Deaf, but rely a lot on captioning. Especially when it's a voice-over and no lipreading is possible.

Nathan Dawthorne said...

That shirt looks great on you!

Anonymous said...

I'm with Nathan. I like the yellow shirt!

Dave Hingsburger said...

Andrea, I am sorry, I had planned on writing out the content of my interview but I had limited internet, I am forwarding your comment to the company. I am angry at myself for not asking - being always in a rush is no excuse, I should have been more careful.

Unknown said...

Andrea

Thank you for your comment. Yes you are right there are no closed captions and ultimately I do not have a good response for you.

Our resource is very reliant on films and we already have over 400 short films. We did originally explore the cost of adding closed captions to our films, not only for people who are deaf but also for people for whom English is not their first language, but because of the number of films within the resource the cost of doing so was beyond our budget.

We did add professionally recorded voice over for all of our written content.

I know YouTube has a closed captioning software that will automatically add captions for you, but also know it is not particularly good.

I hope this is something we are able to add in the future.

Your Sincerely

Ben Drew

cheeselady said...

You Tube's closed captioning is hideous and rarely makes sense. I'm glad Mr. Drew responded, but was not satisfied with his response. Hopefully, his company will realize the demand is there and work on this issue. A voice-over, professional or not, is basically useless to those who lip-read, by the way.

Shan said...

Well, I liked the trailer and I liked the look of the module. Good job!

Anonymous said...

Good stuff! Andrew agrees with your comment in the video about the types of things asked (especially about what you are never asked; but, that's a lot of what is explained as the standard "sex education") ... and it was interesting to note the other gentleman's enlightenment about the single beds vs double beds. We hope to access the information in the future, if possible.

Andrew & Elizabeth

Belinda said...

Fabulous!! Most definitely will be signing up.

Anonymous said...

Great tool. Especially for those of us in rural locations and with limited budgets. Now if the board will just approve the expense! I can't wait to get started.
Thanks Dave