The Traveler

Issue date: 3/28/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Traveler Staff Charlie Casper, a civil engineering major, has been a CEA transcriber for two years. In addition to taking 15 hours for his major, Casper takes an extra 12 hours to take notes for his three clients.

Transcribers for deaf and hard-of-hearing students are an increasing need on the UA campus, the director of the Center for Educational Access said.

"Transcription is a means to translate spoken word to a visual (text) format (similar to what a court reporter would do)," CEA Director Anne L. Jannarone said.

A trained transcriber sits in class with a student and uses a laptop computer with specialized abbreviation software to transcribe - type the meaning of - what is being said in lectures and discussions, Jannarone said. ??

A hearing-impaired student then is able to read the transcript in real time from a second computer, type questions and comments to the transcriber to be voiced and take notes in the software program on the second computer, she said. ??

The shortage of transcribers is most commonly because of the hiring process.

"The hiring and retention piece of this issue is a bit more complicated than it may appear on the surface," Jannarone said. ?

"To take a job as a transcriber, a person must be very committed to stay with an intensive training program and to practice their skills on a regular basis," she said. ?

If students do make it through the training, some are disappointed with the fact that they can't be guaranteed a certain number of hours a week because their work times are completely dependent on the hearing-impaired students' schedules, Jannarone said.

And because so few students use the service, some trained transcribers can't get enough hours and quit to take new jobs.

"It's a Catch-22 of sorts," she said.

Jannarone has one student registered in the office who is identified as deaf and eight to 10 others who are identified as "hard-of-hearing," she said. Four of those students use transcribers.

One student, Scott Howell, a 19-year-old freshman majoring in accounting and management, is facing challenges due to the lack of transcribers on campus. ??

"Though I am deaf, I rely on verbal communication and am not an exclusive signer," Howell said. "Thus, I have struggled to follow an interpreter on difficult topics - such as finance, physics or architecture."

Continued...

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