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• Kindle Wireless Reading Device - Review
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Millions Of Us Are Going Deaf And Our Computer Won't Help Us
Roger Born
Columnist, The Macintosh Continuum
Friday, 12/29/06
More and more people are going deaf. Millions of us, especially of the Baby Boomer generation, are losing our hearing in the middle range, where speech resides.
You don't have to be totally deaf to have a problem, you just need to be a little hard of hearing (HoH). And if you find yourself in this condition, you will immediately notice that there is not a lot of help from your computer, the single thing you own that could easily help you the most.
Got Tinnitus? Straining to read lips in a fast moving business meeting? Concerned that you are missing some vital bit of information in a conversation? Have you stopped talking to your mate/family as much, because you just can't hear what they are saying? Do you get frustrated in noisy places because it makes conversation difficult?
Some of you might be in denial. A few of you might not even know it (but your friends and family do).
Sorry. There is no pill, drug or medication for this condition. If you are deaf or HoH, you must increasingly rely on mechanical aids to help you, such as super-expensive hearing aids, closed captioning, or a trusty person to translate for you later (hopefully they will remember the punchline to that joke you didn't get). And no, there is no reliable medication for Tinnitus available anywhere. Just ask someone who has looked for a long time. (Ahem.)
If you are already a member of this fast growing population, then you know there are places where you are not welcome. KEYNOTES come to mind, since the Big One is just a few days away. No captioning. No interpreters outside of the main auditorium (you DO know American Sign Language, don't you?). If you are HoH at Apple's Keynote January 9th, you are out of luck knowing some of what happened until you can get to a transcription from themacobserver.com, applelinks.com, or gizmodo.com.
As I said, the most ultra-advanced technology you own (your computer) is the least compatible with your problem. Even the Mac you know and love so well.
Notice that there is no captioning for YouTube. Or Quicktime. Or any video media on the computer. Even many of your favorite movies played on the Mac do not have adequate captioning, since that service is farmed out to transcribers who are not all that interested in captioning every word, and who sometimes get the words wrong. But Captioning could be done automatically for you by your Mac - if the software were available to do so.
You would think that Steve Jobs, who builds the greatest computer on the planet and who practically owns the music player industry would get a clue about automatically captioning everything his company puts out or touches in video and audio. In fact, this feature should be built-in to every Mac made.
This kind of captioning technology is rather low-tech, really. Software is already out there that will allow you to have on-the-fly captioning, even in video chats, but alas, it is not available to the public. Even if you could afford a service, it is time-consuming to get a transcription back from something you need to have either captioned or transcribed from a Captioning Service.
Your super advanced, trusty Mac could easily do all of this while you are watching a movie or video, or as you are in a business meeting, but again, there is no software you can buy right now, even though millions of us desperately need it.
Captioning software that you see in network news programs is computerized, which makes for interesting reading because many of the words you read are phonetic substitutes for what was actually said. All this would be adequate except that the people who own it are jealous of anyone getting what they own. Besides, this software is not Mac or PC friendly at all.
The very best software that exists in the academic world for text transcription from voice is Dragon Naturally Speaking. Sorry, Windows only, and it is fairly bug-ridden and CPU intensive, as well, not even being very Windows-friendly. Besides, it only works with text, not audio files on the fly.
All this means is that SOMEONE out there needs to see a big opportunity to make a killing in the market ~ Go ahead and bring out a simple, efficient software package that anyone can use on any computer to bring real time transcription to anything that has an audio component on the computer, including the computer's built-in microphone.
(While you are at it, why not call the new application something appropriate, like ANODYNE.)
((In fact, If this "someone" is Steve Jobs, make it a Bluetooth stand-alone pair of glasses which show the captioning on the bottom of one lense. That way, it can be used anywhere, like in normal conversation, and not just for files on the Mac.))
You do know YOU need this, right? Your friends know you do, as you go singing down the hall at work, "The sheep don't like it. Stop the cat box"
. . .
LINKS ~
The Internet is Not Captioned
The Number of Deaf/HoH In The Workplace
Deaf Hosting News Site
(As a footnote, I rely on iTunes quite a bit to hear anything on my Mac. I cannot hear any Quicktime or Media Player file unless I find a way to play it in iTunes. I have a G4 Powerbook, and use Tiger OS X with Quicktime 7, and for some reason no one at Apple can explain, the sound level has permanently gone south with this particular software/hardware combo. Does anyone else who is hard of hearing have this problem?)
Regards,
Roger Born
"Sorry. No Refunds."
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What?
Posted by Guy Serle
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This Info via Raymond Luczak, raymondluczak.com ~ Thanks!
Quicktime does have captioning capability. If only anyone creating Quicktime movies would use it.
Regards,
Posted by Roger Born
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Roger:
Your piece was just a lovely summation of what deafness really is: information inaccessibility.
You simply forgot one *small* fact: Steve Jobs is HoH in one ear (if not both). That's why the first wave of his iPods were quite loud, and which is why I liked them (I have severe-profound sensorineural hearing loss in both ears). He hasn't gotten around to wearing a hearing aid yet; if he is, he's probably wearing an in-the-ear (canal) model. You should check this out, and if it's verifiable, it would be a wonderful thing for the media to remind him of the need in the next paragraph. It'd be awesome if a lot of the Mac-savvy bloggers could pick up on this.
You should also mention that there are some estimated 28 million Americans who have hearing loss problems, and most of them probably can't follow the movie downloads sold by the iTunes Store. It is just amazing that Steve Jobs is missing out on this potential market with the omission of optional subtitles and/or offering a second copy of the movie with subtitles burned onto the image. Need I say that as the number of baby boomers grow older, the number of Americans with hearing problems will just skyrocket? Hearing loss *will* become part of our national vocabulary in the future.
For now I use Handbrake, a free utility that allows me to convert captioned or subtitled clips (which I've legally purchased for my own use) into iPod-compatible videos with captions or subtitles burned onto the bottom of the image. Not the most graceful solution, perhaps, but as a deaf person with some residual hearing, it's a godsend.
And as an American Sign Language (ASL) user, I am looking forward to using the rumored iChat's Answering Machine in Leopard. There, I could leave an outgoing message in ASL and have my deaf friends leave their messages when I'm out.
I could go on and on about how empowering Macs have been for me as a deaf person and creative artist, but I think my web site has enough evidence for you to consider.
May you have a most Happy New Year.
Sincerely,
Raymond Luczak
BOOKS * FILMS * PLAYS
http://www.raymondluczak.com/
Posted by Raymond65
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There will be a TEXT FEED for th rest of us of the 2007 Keynote at MacWorld
Here is the link ~ http://www.worldofapplelive.com/
Posted by Roger Born
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