Response to article in A List Apart
Lisa Herrod’s article for A List Apart, “Deafness and the User Experience” (ALA 265, 2008.08.12), makes incorrect attributions about the Open & Closed Project. The Open & Closed Project isn’t doing what the article claims we are.
First of all, as of Summer 2008, the Open & Closed Project is still nothing more than the combination of a good idea, a founder, and numerous supporters. Absent from this combination is any funding to carry out the work.
Second, we did not, at any time, claim that subtitling is a “method... of presenting accessible media for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.” Subtitling is a translation and isn’t adequate to make an audiovisual production accessible to deaf viewers. We specifically state that “[s]ubtitling is not captioning, and the Open & Closed Project will not confuse the two.”
Third, the claim that “the Open & Closed Project doesn’t address the needs of the big-D Deaf community as well as many people think it does” strikes us as tautological. We have not been going around making any such claims, nor has there been a lot of chatter that indicates what “many people think.” So far, there is no indication that anyone thinks anything of the Open & Closed Project – except perhaps that it would be a bang-up idea and would have been fully funded and underway by now if somebody else were behind it.
The Open & Closed Project does not concentrate on sign-language translation because it is out of our remit. Translation into one sign language does nothing for speakers of other sign languages, whereas captioning benefits everyone who reads that language. Of course, subtitling and dubbing do nothing for speakers of other languages, either. The difference is that subtitling and dubbing do not pretend to do anything but translate. Sign-language translation pretends to provide accessibility for deaf people. That it does – for a minority.
In the Australian context, translation of an Australian English video into Australian Sign Language helps the 5,538 Australians who speak Auslan, but does nothing to make the video accessible to anyone else. (Figure from Australian Bureau of Statistics Census Table 2068.0, “Language Spoken at Home [Full Classification List] by Sex.” Hyde and Power [1991] claim 15,000.)
In a Canadian context, translation of a Canadian English video into ASL helps about 17,000 adults: Of the 5% of the adult population that is deaf, 49.8% of 2.3% of them use any sign language or gestural system.
Captioning that same video makes it accessible to about 1,075,250 Canadians with a hearing impairment (based on the 85% of Canadians who speak English or English and French and 1,265,000 hearing-impaired adults). Captioning also makes it accessible to everyone who speaks English in every other country, including Australia (save for minor differences in spelling). (Here, we view “speaks English” and “reads English” as approximately the same.)
Herrod’s article makes the fundamental claim that captioning isn’t sufficient for all deaf people. True. But sign language isn’t sufficient for most deaf people. To make an audiovisual production accessible, caption it first. You may additionally need to provide one or more sign-language translations. The Open & Closed Project isn’t working on sign-language translations. We’re open to well-formulated arguments why this is a mistake – and what, exactly, standardization would mean in the context of sign-language accessibility.
We think it is impracticable to insert an interpreter into a tiny corner of a tiny corner of compressed Web video. Herrod cites no usability test results that demonstrate this method actually works.
If Deaf people aren’t disabled (despite their “physical condition of not hearing,” as the Australian Association of the Deaf admits), then nobody is required to accommodate them. If Deaf people are merely a linguistic minority, then they have to get in line alongside other linguistic minorities. Their sign-language translation merely becomes one of the many possible translations the producer of a film, video, or television program could provide.
From an accessibility standpoint, all those people with a hearing impairment are better off demanding what they’ve demanded for 30 years or longer – captioning. We’re here to research, develop, write, test, and publish a standard for it.