A captioning question.....

How come at a live political rally there is a sign language interpreter next to a person giving a speech who is running for office in front of thousands of people but no real time captioning nearby?

That's something to think about.

You have about 600,000 culturally deaf people (adults) who use sign language as their main mode of communication but you also have some 38 million people with hearing loss ranging from mild to profound who do not know a lick of sign language. You have about 6 million people who have difficulty hearing in the 18 to 74 age group, a rough estimate. But if you include those over 74 years old the estimate jumps to about 10 million as a total for those 18 and older.  There are about 200 million people in the United States in the 18 to 74 year old age category, an age group of those who are most likely to attend a political rally.  So that means 1 out 33 people in a large crowd listening to what a person is saying on stage at a political rally will have difficulty hearing what's being said vs 1 out 333 people who may be culturally deaf attending the event.

For example, in a crowd of 10,000 people attending a political rally you may have 300 people in the audience who will have trouble hearing or understanding what's being said versus perhaps 30 culturally deaf people who may be in attendance. I think it is a disservice to those who attend a rally but have trouble hearing what's being said with no access to real time captioning. Some have requested CART services at rallies (see page 5) yet this should be done automatically, within reason if it's not cost prohibitive, without the need to ask just as sign language interpreters are sometimes automatically provided.

The real hidden and silent majority of those with hearing loss are not the culturally deaf people but those who don't sign and have trouble hearing while relying on their hearing aids. In time this will change for the better on providing better communication to all those who need it.

Technology is king for deaf users when it comes to communication

Technology is the key to success for deaf and hard of hearing people. It is true today and it will be more so true into the very near future when it comes to helping provide communication to deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the world. Google has come out with a new fangled technology that has been in the works for some years called Google Glasses where it hints at speech-to-text display for deaf users:

Perhaps most interestingly, one patent shows Google is working on a system to help hard-of-hearing and deaf users detect and interpret nearby sounds. The glasses' heads-up display would show arrows and flashing lights to indicate the direction and intensity level of the sound, and even display the words nearby people are speaking. The patent, #8,183,997, was issued to Google today and is titled "Displaying sound indications on a wearable computing system." The system would integrate a speech-to-text feature that determines the text of speech and displays it for the wearer of the glasses.

This concept on augmented reality will be a boon to deaf and hard of hearing users in the near future by allowing the extra-dimension of space, time and information of sound and visuals through the use of these glasses.

When technology allows 100% communication access to language anytime

Imagine this futuristic scenario that may come sooner than later within our lifetime. Forget stem cells or gene therapy and consider the use of technology as the ultimate the answer to every deaf and hard of hearing person's communication needs. One hundred percent accessible to language and communication for every deaf or hard of hearing person. A technology so advanced, its own processor power, artificial intelligence built into a micro-computer smaller than the smallest hearing aid. It has the computational ability to pick up sound, voices, speech patterns, advanced speech recognition algorithms, artificial intelligence, smart grammar software and such that it's able to process spoken words almost instantly in the form of captioned words that would seemingly float before your eye in specially designed eyewear (or perhaps contact lens). No more would you guess what a person might be saying and instead understand 100% of what was spoken to you in a conversation. The ability converse in either a noisy or quiet environment would be easy as apple pie. Let's say this technology come into existence 50 to 75 years from now. That's 2 or 3 generations away.

If available today would you love to have this piece of non-invasive, highly intelligent piece of technology and software? And become easily part of the hearing world at your own time and choosing? Would you love to have this piece of this technology?

Who wouldn't?

Now, imagine this technology does become available and it'd be relatively inexpensive to own. Wouldn't that be fantastic?

Ok. Let's go a step further. That means just about every deaf and hard of hearing person from little children to adults could have this piece of technology just as easily as wearing a hearing aid or eye glasses. It would become so easy for users become an integral part of the hearing world indistinguishable from anything else. A technology so advanced that it would allow 100 percent access to communication and language in the written form without the need for interpreters. Would this piece of technology eventually make obsolete the concept of a deaf/hh community? What about the Deaf community? Would this advanced technology actually create a disincentive on the need to learn sign language when a deaf or hh can easily help with the communication in a hearing world? How would this technology impact on the socialization of deaf and hard of hearing people? What about the size of the Deaf community? Would it go down because of this technology?

Just food for thoughts, folks.

Oh, by the way, people are working on such an idea for several years now. Like here, here, and this video example this year that shows exactly where we are going with eyewear video and speech recognition ability. It's only a matter of time until we get to the point of total indepence with the full and complete ability to interact with the hearing world in person at anytime and any place.