Everything You Wanted to Know About CART Writing - Part 9

By Cheryl Heppner

Editor: The folks at NVRC recently hosted (along with the local HLAA and ALDA chapters) a panel of CART experts to provide the latest information on this crucial technology. Cheryl did her usual outstanding job of writing it up and sharing it with interested folks. Here's her report. You are welcome to share this information, but please be sure to credit NVRC.

This is part nine of eleven parts.

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Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Chris Gaskill:

I would just like to add that I think that the class setting is the perfect opportunity when you have a situation where the student doesn't want to be singled out. When it's an ongoing class that meets three days a week for two hours, the agency is going to try to have the same reporter there every class for you. So first the reporter becomes a fixture in the class. We can set it up so the student can be off to the side, and like Karen mentioned, with wireless, or even with wires. The reporter is set up far enough away from them. Because it's an ongoing class, they can really get to know each other, work well together, and your son can have a rewarding experience there. It's the ideal situation for it.

Chuck Motter:

Another thing is that remote CART is not the right fit for some classes. You need to make that clear. Today, yesterday, start talking to the potential colleges that he is looking at. We panelists were discussing some of the challenges we experience before the program began. August and January we get flooded with calls from the Office of Disabilities, Student Disabilities, at various universities going, "We just had somebody walk in. Class starts Monday. It's Friday, and we need CART beginning at 9:00 A.M. on Monday."

Most of us have developed our calendars with our writers, and it's very hard to make that accommodation and provide the service. So you as a parent, your son as a student, need to be proactive now and get that set up. Remote CART, as Chris said, is not the right fit for every class. If it is a pure lecture class where we can properly mic the professor, have an opportunity to talk with him or her about what we need and how to make this work well, that's the perfect setup for remote CART.

On the other hand, if it's a very interactive class, one where there's a lot of participation by the students, that's not such a good fit. You can kind of limp through that, but, again, you need to advocate for somebody on site if at all possible.

When dealing with large institutions, whether it's government agencies, large corporations, schools, one of the limitations of remote CART can be getting past technological firewalls to get into their system. Lining this up as far in advance as you can is very helpful. We as the CART reporters can then interface with the person who is coordinating the service from within, and we do trial runs. We do meetings on campus or on site so that we know what are the physical challenges that we need to overcome.

Attendee:

I am a social worker at a continuing care retirement community. I am here to explore this technology for the senior population who have hearing impairment and also quite typically vision impairment. My question is two parts. In general, do you have anything to share about your experiences in working with this type of population? And specifically, do you find with on site or remote, that one is preferable to the other or this type of setting?

Karen McConnell:

I don't have much experience with it, but I have a little bit. Most people who come to NVRC who are deaf and hard-of-hearing know how to behave, I guess you could say, in a setting where you have people who are hard of hearing and don't want to admit it. I find that here we're very good about handing microphones over, and identifying people, and not talking over each other. I think that it would be great in a setting for hard of hearing adults, to have meetings where they could actually read the screen. A lot of times they don't read too fast either and I find they can get confused. You have to be able to read well. But I think that it would be a great thing to do.

Chuck Motter:

Personally I don't think that the age of the population has much to do with it. I have a group that I love to provide for because they always bring me cookies, and they just love me coming. That came out of an unusual circumstance.

I have a very good friend with a significant hearing loss that I've worked with for many years. Her mother, who lived in a retirement community, passed away. I thought it would be appropriate for me to CART her mother's funeral for her. I didn't tell her I was going to do it, I just showed up and I CARTed it for her. I was very unobtrusive. I sat near her, but yet far enough away that no one could really make a connection, and I wrote wirelessly and put the laptop down low so I thought no one else could see it. There was an older lady sitting behind my friend, and she could see what was going on. She came up and asked for my card. I gave it to her thinking that it was of interest to her.

Come to find out she is like the geek guru of this retirement community and heads up their computer interest group. I now go several times a year and speak to them on CART and captioning, and they have asked me to come out and do various events at their facility. It always is a wonderful experience. That's on site CART. I don't have any experience in the remote world there. Just of some interest, we're seeing the population that we're serving become younger and younger. I personally think that it has to do with the iPods, and riding with people on the Metro who have that thing so doggone high that I can tell what the words are from across the aisle. So I think that the population is going to grow on the younger end of the spectrum, too. But I am pretty easy. If you bring me cookies, I'm there.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

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