Hearing Loss LIVE! Talks with Jen Schuck, Chair of Global Alliance for Speech-to-Text Captioning

There's great new organization out there called Global Alliance for Speech-to-Text Captioning. Their goal is to educate. Educate consumers. Educate businesses. Educate CART providers. Educate. Educate. Educate.

AND IT IS GREAT!!!!!

ALD, captiong, CART, Typewell and ASR all provide a very necessary key component for us. Equal access to communication.

we hope to have Global Alliance as a guest in the future as we work to share knowledge on how captioning can help your employees, client and consumers. And how YOU as the consumer can request captioning.

Vist https://speechtotextcaptioning.org/ and learn more today!

Remember to like and share. Subscribe to our YouTube page where you can watch full captioned video of this podcast.

Transcript

Hearing Loss LIVE! talks with Global Alliance Speech-to-Text Captioning, Chair Jen Schuck. 

Julia: Hi there. Welcome to Hearing Loss LIVE! This week we have invited Jen Schuck, who is a captioner by trade and also the Chair for Global Alliance for Speech-to-Text, which is a great platform that involves all sorts of captioners. And consumers, I think their boards made up of both if memory serves. And their goal in life is to make a certified training and program for captioning to be equal access across all of the United States, they may be in other countries, I will let Jen give some background, they've been around a couple of years. So they're still a new kid on the block. And we really feel that they need the name out there. And we need to get the word out and help them with their goals in life. And I'm struggling for words, as usual. So Jen, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Jen: Thank you, Julia. Thank you so much for inviting me on to your podcast. I think that all of us here have the same goal and mission in life. To increase accessibility, and increase awareness about captioning to the general public. A lot of people don't know what captioning is. And even consumers don't know in what realm, they can have services. So I know we could talk all day, but we will try not to do that. So you are correct, you hit a lot of my highlights. The Global Alliance for Speech-to-Text Captioning has been in existence now for about two and a half years. We launched with some pretty hefty goals. And we have reached one of them. One of our goals was to create a certification for all methods of captioning. And we did that in January of this year. Just in time for this week, World Hearing Day, which is Thursday, March 3rd, so I wanted to make sure that we raise awareness about that. So hopefully everybody will get on social media and do some stuff on Thursday, March 3rd for World Hearing Day. So we recently launched our Certification Assessment Program, which is called the NER Certified Speech-to-Text Provider. And the reason we chose this particular method of using the NER, which I will abbreviate as NER, but know that that is NER is because it can be used for all methods of captioning. So the Global Alliance represents both stenographers, voice writers, as well as, automatic speech recognition and consumers. We have all four categories of representatives on our board of directors. And technology is not going away. It's only improving. And there is a place for all methods. The one method I haven't mentioned, is Type-well, and or C-print, which is the meaning for meaning version of real time captioning. We currently do not have any board members representing that category, but we do have members. So we do welcome membership for type well, operators and secret operators. Because they play a role. And they also provide technically real time captioning. So let me go back to our certification and assessment. It applies to voice writing, the stenographic version of captioning as well as ASR. It's currently not modeled for type well or secret, but we are working on that. So that is to come. And the reason we wanted to have this certification and assessment is so that there is a level playing field that there is a standard for all methods. Consumers may or may not be aware of which method of captioning they're getting. More educated consumers will, others won't, and they will take whatever is given to them. But they're entitled to a level of accuracy, regardless of what method. And so that's the point of view where the Global Alliance is coming from. And why we specifically chose this model it is a little more flexible, and takes into account the subjectivity that a captioner has to use in the moment in real time when making a decision about how they're going to handle a particular situation, either with crosstalk or background noise, or really difficult terminology that they know, may not translate. But the consumer still needs that information. And when using a verbatim method of grading,

it doesn't take that subjectivity into account. And it was created by Pablo Romero Fresco who was an original board member for the Global Alliance and a founding member. And he's done many, many studies. And he was the one who created the NER model. And it was fascinating when he presented it to us. And we knew right away it was a fit. Is being used in Canada, in Australia, and in some countries over in Europe. And Pablo is based in Spain, if I'm not mistaken, but has affiliations with some universities in the UK. So it is global, it's being used worldwide, it just wasn't being used here in the US. So we wanted to bring it here and get it rolled out. So it's launched, we already have one member who is certified and some others who have signed up. I've personally signed up but haven't yet taken the exam. So that is to come.

Chelle: So this is Chelle. While you were talking, one of the things that popped up into my mind was when the pandemic first started. And suddenly, everyone wanted CART, it was in such high demand that we ended up with court reporters. And, you know, I know they meant well, but they did not understand the hard of hearing community and captioning. And which leads to the other question, we've always used CART. But I understand you're going to like a speech-to-text thing. That's probably two separate questions.

Jen: Yeah, so don't let me forget part one and part two. So I will start with your first part of when the pandemic first hit. As difficult as that was, it really did shed a light on the need for online accessibility. So if we are going to look for a silver lining, right, I look at it and say, well, that is definitely one it brought awareness to an arena that absolutely needed to be brightened and let the general public know what is needed for individuals with varying levels of hearing loss. I feel like that is going to continue to be an advocacy effort. Because in addition to the demand for captioning, there was an explosion of online platforms of which none of them took captioning or accessibility into account. Every day, there was a new platform that every, that somebody was using that, you know, the question was, well, how do I get captioning into it? And the answer was, you don't. So you know, there's there was a lot of awareness made. And now we need to take it to that next step of getting to the developers of platforms and technology to let them know that accessibility needs to be at the forefront of their creation. And yes, because there was such a demand, there were not enough humans to do the jobs that needed to be done. I feel like even if I captioned 24 hours a day, seven days a week in 2020, there was still going to be somebody out there who needed accessibility. We were all working really hard. And so companies did what they needed to do to provide quote unquote, accessibility. However, using somebody who is not trained in providing realtime captioning, captioning is not accessibility. It's checkmark to say you did, but it is not a checkmark of providing accessibility. So there are definitely things that we need to do to educate, even within our own world of captioners, to let other people know who are doing the same job we're doing, kind of sort of that they need just a little bit more training. And that's why the Global Alliance has all of these categories as directors and membership. Because captioners need to train captioners and captioners need to train consumers. And frankly, consumers need to train captioners. We all need to come together because we all have to learn from one another if we're going to affect change, and we're going to bring rules about and try to make legislation, we need to do that together. Because if we can do that now, and and come to an agreement and do all of that front end work, and then go to Congress, or our legislators state level, and say we've come united with an answer, how do they say no? But we need to do that now. And create that package, so to speak, to bring it to them. You know, if you go in front of somebody and say, well, I want to make this change. And they say, well, how are you going to do it? Well, then you've got years of work in front of you. I come from the perspective of let's do that years of work now. And come with a solid package. So they can't say no, so they can't delay

that progress.

And your second part of your question that I said, Don't let me forget, was the speech-to-text. terminology. So the reason that the Global Alliance has the name that it has, and includes speech-to-text is because that is the literal definition of what we are doing. We are taking speech and producing text. It doesn't say how, it doesn't say what method and that's the terminology that they use in Europe. In Europe, they don't call it captioning, they call it subtitling. If you're a voice writer, they don't even call them voice writers, they call them respeakers. And so the Global Alliance is intended to be global. And so we needed to take into account the terminology that everybody uses, knowing that it's different all around the world. And using speech-to-text is the easiest way to identify the job at hand, with hopefully, the public at large, understanding what it is that we're doing. Everything requires an explanation. But it's more of an elevator speech, than it is this big, long conversation of let's sit down and have an hour long cup of coffee, so I can explain to you what captioning is,

which I'm more than happy to do with people who are willing to listen. Michele I see your hand.

Michele: As we've talked beforehand, I've been a consumer captioning advocate for over a decade now. And I'm just wondering if you could tell us the advantage for consumers to join Global Alliance to become a member and and what kind of things do you offer for consumers there?

Jen: Well, I will tell you, we do have three board members who are consumers. And I don't want to say I forget about the consumer, because without consumers, I don't have a job. And my personal opinion, and how I come to my job every day is the experiences about the consumer. It's not about me as the captioner. It's what can I do to enhance your experience of which I get the privilege to be a part of whether it's for 30 minutes, or it's for eight hours or for the next week at a conference or something let's say. So often, our board members who are consumers remind us of what it is that we need to do for consumers? Or how do we look at our messaging to the consumer or to enhance the consumer's experience. And I can bring to the table, how I do my job, what I'm capable of doing, the technology behind it, the limitations. But as we kind of talked before we started here today. Many, many, many people do not know what captioning is or that it's available to them, including consumers. And so we not only need to educate television stations, large corporations, small corporations, anybody who is providing a service, but we also need to educate and empower the consumers with hearing loss, and they don't know. And advocacy is an uphill battle. We all know that. And I touched on a little bit about effecting change and wanting to make a difference. And having all of those voices at the table, there is that saying in the disability movement have nothing about me without me. And the Global Alliance has absolutely no intentions of doing anything without the voice of the consumer. And in order to get that they need to be involved. We need them to be members. 

Michele:Thank you. 

Jen: You're welcome.

Julia: It actually gave me another thought. So we're all with you about the consumers need to advocate. That's been a really big push, and we plan to make more of it this year, about hearing loss needs to step out of the shadows, and demand to have equal access, especially when it comes to communication. But here's a question and you may not have an answer for this. How do we get more people to go into the profession? This? How do we get into those high schools where they have concurrent enrollments? And they're offering mechanics the ability to start their, you know, their, their certifications? And how do we? This might be a bigger question in general, but how do we get, effectively get more in-person CART, Captioning. Just all of that, how do we, again, and I'm with you on the legislation thing, because I think that's what I keep telling Chelle, that's where we're headed. We're headed to legislation before this is all over with. But how do we back that up by getting out that word out there that this is? Okay, so I'm going to give you some background because I'm a blabber mouth. I have recently been told were a dying art. Not once, but a couple times now. And I've had to just like, stop that's not true. Yes, Utah it's very hard to get in person CART, because there's very few of us. But that's because you're only asking once every couple of years. I've got other work on the books because I can work anywhere from my my office, I'm happy to come in person if there's time on the books. So how do we get it out there? We are not a dying profession. Because I'm with you speech, speech-to-text ASR that's, that's here to stay, and we need to embrace it. But we need people to know when it's appropriate versus needing live CART type thing? 

Jen: It's a great question, and I don't have a perfect answer for it. Boy, I wish I did. Um, you know, part of it is cloning ourselves. And so unless that technology is gonna, you know, really just get up to speed here really quickly. We still have some training that we have to go through and all of that. One of it is, yes, getting the word out that this is a job. And this is an opportunity, and it's a great opportunity. So there there is that. And we can all do that a little bit by ourselves just by talking about what we do. My license plate says captioner on it. And I've had people at the gas station, say to me, what does your license plate say? And all I say to them is sound it out? And they go captioner? And I go Yeah, do you know what that is? And I've actually had one person say to me, yeah, it's like the captions on TV. I was shocked. And so it's just striking up those conversations with anybody who's willing to listen, anybody who has college age kids, high school kids. Part of it, though, I think that's highly problematic, at least from a stenographic point of view is it's a hard skill to learn. And it takes a long time. And there are a lot of barriers to entry. It's expensive. It's a time commitment, and not everybody can do it. And I don't foresee those three barriers to entry going away either. So there's there's that I don't have a good answer for that. But it doesn't mean we don't stop talking about it. Voice writing has a lower barrier of entry in terms of it's not years to learn. I don't want to say it's easier because there is definitely a technique to it. And there are people who are who good at it, and some people who are not so good at it. I've not tried it, I keep saying I want to be cross trained, you know who, who has the spare time, maybe like you said maybe one of these days. But so there is that method that I do see is growing and gaining a little more attention, because of the lower cost of entry to that. ASR is going to have its lane. It just is. And frankly, for the right person in the right environment, it is an acceptable solution. But it does take the right person and the right environment. And this is why we have to educate consumers to know the difference, to know looking at it, what they're getting, to know what they need. And you know, and then as we talked about the C print of the Typewell, depending on your level of hearing loss, that might be the perfect solution for you, you don't need verbatim, you need more of that meaning for meaning. And that's the right solution. So how do we gain more people doing this? We keep talking about it. We have training programs. There needs to be more training programs. Even if a court reporter comes to me and says I want to be a captioner? How do I learn to do what you do? I can think of less than five places where I would refer them for training. And the trainings? Those people are busy. So we need more good training options, and, and advocacy, which I know can be exhausting, but we just can't stop and we need more voices doing the work.

Chelle: This is Chelle and I just had a second thought, you know, I worked at the Deaf and Hard of Hearing agency here in Utah, and I know a lot of interpreters are CODA- they're children of deaf adults. I wonder if we could convince like more of our family members who know how much we depend on it to become captioners.

Jen: And, you know, you raise a great point, Chelle, I often think of ASL interpreters being cross trained. They have the mindset of doing what we do in terms of being, a doing word substitution on the fly. They understand the population that we work with, and have that sensitivity training, to working with people with hearing loss. And so that might be a group of people as well that we could target so that they

can be cross trained.

But Julia, like you said, there is a lot of work. And I think you asked about

it--

Michele: Not sure how we are on time. I guess what I see with captioning and live captioning, which is CART, excuse me, is doesn't seem to get the same exposure as other forms of translation or interpretation. And that was glaringly clear when I was in the ER yesterday in the hospital, which was nothing serious. But they brought in an interpretation cart, and it's a video, basically an iPad on a cart and brought up the sign language interpretation screen, even though I told them I'm a lipreader, and don't use sign language. And I said, surely you have live captioning on here? Well, no, there's nothing like that on there. And so I was using my phone and my Otter gave out, which is the speech-to-text app that that you use on your smartphone. And the nurse said, Well, we can, it's okay just to use phones. We don't need that on here. And I was looking later on in the captioning. And I actually had to go to my notes app. And my notes app showed that she had said the F word and I showed it to her and I said so did you really say that? And she read it and she was mortified. And I said that's why we need live captioning. We need interpretation. We need quality. And most people are not like me. They don't know that they have these options. So it's the hospital's responsibility to know how to communicate with their patients. And I think the interpretation CART was more for people who didn't speak English and they need a translator and services. And then of course, there's sign language there, but there's nothing for me. And so I was feeling really bad yesterday, but I was advocating for CART and live captioning good quality. And I'm just blown away by that still.

Jen: And rightfully so. But when you are in an emergency room setting, you shouldn't have to advocate for yourself, you're already super stressed and not feeling well. Otherwise you wouldn't be there. And to add that level of burden, because that's what it is to advocate for yourself. It's frustrating. It's frustrating for me. It's more than frustrating and maddening for you. And I find it interesting, coincidental Call it whatever you want. That this experience comes right on the heels of the Global Alliance Empower Hour on Friday, that was for medical professionals talking about this exact topic. Like how do we get into these huge health care systems and say, this is also an avenue you have to have available? You have you have options for ASL, you have options for language translation. Why is captioning any different? Why is there not an option for that? And it's because they just don't think about it.

Julia: I agree. And, and this is why it's very important for not just consumers, but businesses, hospitals. You need to be involved with Global Alliances and learn the difference in types of captioning that are available for your clients and your employees. They have good advice, they have tons Oh my gosh, we've already hit 25 minutes, no way. They have tons of providers. And I know at one point you used to list kind of the difference in each provider. And I don't know if you're, if it's more when they opened it now, but which is very helpful. Because even as a CART provider, I've had students who would prefer Typewell. They they prefer that meaning for meaning, or they've asked me even can you just summarize I don't want verbatim and, and, and you'll find that a lot of us in the educational are kind of used to that. So but I loved your hospital Empower Hour, it was very enlightening. I was shocked to find out Utah's a little head of the game there. They figured out some captioning for some of their clients visiting the hospitals.

So no two.

Oh, yeah. One Hospital. Yeah.

Jen: Well, and after that, we had some inquiries about how other health care agencies are handling it in their environment. So offline, I would love to talk to you about what is working for your hospitals. And that's really what the Global Alliance is about. We, we give the information, we put it out, but it starts a conversation. And it's connecting people. Because that's how we learn, we learn from one another by what is working in Utah, so that we can tell somebody in South Dakota what you know, they don't have a solution yet. Michele is clearly looking for a solution in Minnesota. And so we need to reach out to them and have this conversation. And I realize not every environment will have the exact same answer. But we learn from one another. And if it works for one, then you can tweak it or iterate it to work for yours as well.

Julia: Perfect. Awesome. Any other questions before I close it out? My young ladies.

Jen: I feel like we could talk all day about all sorts of things. And-

I know right?

-- a list of a lot of things that I want to discuss. But that means we'll be here for hours. So you can do this again. 

Julia: We'll just bring you back and we'll have you as a as a guest speaker so many times a month. Some days it could be every month, every day. Yeah.

Jen: sounds great. Well, I really appreciate you giving me this platform in this opportunity to talk about the Global Alliance. We are small because we're new. And it's hard to get your name out there. We are, we are trying and we are we are doing it. And we are making strides. We've got a lot of ideas. We are not short on ideas and things that we want to do and get done. What we're learning is it's one thing at a time, you know. We're all stretched for time, even more so than we were two years ago. Life is different now. But life is different with an even more demand and even a more a bigger need for accessibility. And so that just means our work has increased and we have even more to do than we did two years ago.

Julia: I think we all agree with you on that. So we appreciate you coming and speaking with us today. And I do think we'll have you back because here shortly we plan to start our own movement on captioning and CAR and access. And we're working on that in the background. So watch for that to roll out here before summer starts. I'm going to end with a question for you all. Did you ask for captions today? Whether it's automatic speech recognition, whether it's CART, Computer Aided real time translation, or even Typewell. Did you ask? Did you ask for assistive listening device at a venue you were visiting, or at a meeting place? Um, if you're not asking for this, and you're finding out that you're not having equal access to the communication, you need to ask for it, right? We need the word out there that we are just as important as everybody else to get full access to whatever it is we are participating with. And if you're concerned or have questions or, or need letters, we have all that here at hearinglosslive.com. And if you haven't checked out Global Alliance for Speech-to-Text, we've got their internet, of course, their website of course running down here on the bottom, you need to check'em out. Not only do they have a great list for companies to hire providers and information and a great newsletter, they have different levels of membership, I was gonna say communication, but we're all on communication, right? So different levels of memberships. As well as a whole bunch of training videos that they have available that you could maybe use to learn more about captioning, in general, and more about Global Alliances. Have some great panel talks they have Empower Hour, once a month, or is it every other week,

Jen: Every roughly four to six weeks. Okay?

Julia: And it's actually got some great stuff for you. So if nothing else, sign up so you can find out how to participate and be involved. And we look forward to seeing you next time. Bye.