TDI Town Hall Meeting - Part Two

By Lise Hamlin

Editor: NVRC's Lise Hamlin attended the TDI Town Hall Meeting on June 1, 2007 and wrote this great article summarizing the proceedings. Note in particular Dana Mulvany's comments regarding the unaddressed needs of the OHL community.

You are welcome to share this information, but please be sure to credit NVRC. See the statement at the end of the article.

This is part two of two parts.

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Here's Part One

June 2007

Dana Mulvany complimented TDI on the high quality of their biennial conferences. She then pointed out that hard of hearing people had certain needs that had not been mentioned in Dr. Miller's presentation, and she provided some examples:

• The lack of national access to teleconferences since traditional relay services are not able to keep up with the speed of a teleconference. This could be addressed by the provision of remote CART services (which some states and the federal government have already arranged).

• The absence of audio standards for VoIP and cell phone technology, which may currently compress speech to save bandwidth, thereby altering the sound of speech and endangering speech comprehension for hard of hearing people. Although people with normal hearing may be able to understand compressed speech sounds, many hard of hearing people may be completely unable to understand what is being said to them because they may best hear the very sounds that were eliminated by the compression. This has already happened with some cell phones and could happen as more and more people migrate to VoIP, but the FCC has not mandated standards for the quality of the audio that is transmitted.

• The fundamental quality of CapTel service has not appeared to improve since its conception; there needs to be a push to improve it.

• Current video relay services need to better address the needs of people with hearing loss who benefit a great deal from simultaneous speechreading and listening but who do not know sign language. A new video relay service for hard of hearing people could be developed which would utilize the services of a trained "re-voicer" who would revoice what other people were saying; the video and audio technology would need to provide simultaneous transmission of both the voice and the video. The re-voicer would not need to know sign language.

Dana suggested that TDI consider surveying its members to get input on topics such as these, perhaps providing different surveys for each group. She also suggested that TDI consider developing an ideal accessible teleconference center which would provide video and audio of everyone attending the meeting and also incorporate captioning. The goal would be for remote and present participants to be able to receive video and/or audio of each person who was talking or signing and of the interpreter for that person. Dana asked how TDI currently finds out about problems from its members and it determines which projects to focus on.

After listening intently to Dana's suggestions, Claude invited her to work with TDI on these issues. He noted that TDI's priorities are set by its Board, and informed by the 200-300 emails they receive each day, as well as by information gained through their membership in such coalitions as the Deaf & Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network (DHHCAN), the E9-1-1 National Stakeholder Council, and the new Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT). Dr. Miller then took the stage to comment that the Board would welcome her suggestions. He asked that she send them to him, and also commented that if she could find a few million for a model conference center, he'd be eager to support that.

Next up was Samuel Jones whose story of seeing the original version of "Ocean's 11" - without captions - and then much later with captions - brought nods of recognition from the crowd. While Samuel was pleased he could now see a captioned version of the movie, he still found there were often technical problems with captioned DVDs. Claude thanked him for his input, indicating that while there was a recent settlement agreement regarding captioned DVDs, he welcomed the opportunity to hear more from consumers when they found problems with DVD's and other telecommunications and media issues.

Finally, Greg Hlibok thanked Claude and TDI for all their work with the FCC. Greg said that TDI provides the FCC with critical information on the consumer perspective on issues before the Commission.

With time running out, Claude invited participants to join TDI again for their 17th Biennial Conference in San Mateo, California August 23-25, 2007, entitled "Shaping an Accessible World." He then directed participants to refreshments in the back of the room. He thanked Hamilton Relay for providing the refreshments and the accommodations: sign language interpreters and CART. An infrared listening system installed in the meeting room was also made available to participants. Many attendees took Claude up on his offer, enjoying the refreshments and continuing their conversations with each other for well over a half hour before heading out into the humid night.

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