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Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

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Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#51

Post by bombcar »

sdrothrock wrote: post #17
elil17 wrote: post #6

Is this a team mate at a US company? If so, note that Teams live captioning may not be enough to meet your non discrimination requirements. Your company may have a legal obligation to hire an ASL interpreter or human transcriber, including for in person meetings. My biggest recommendation is to use a phone call for audio because he can then use America’s free video relay service for ASL or captioned telephone service…

> Finally, something that people might not think about: If he misses something someone said and asks you what it was, never say "it's nothing" or "it wasn't important" or "it was just a joke" no matter how minor the comment was. Just repeat it no matter what. This is absolutely critical. It's hard enough to interrupt multiple times (especially when you need to ask about the same misheard thing multiple times) and bei…

For these kinds of things, especially in a virtual meeting, having a "side channel" chat can be entirely helpful - I do it for people who aren't fully paying attention or are otherwise distracted.

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#52

Post by bombcar »

HideousKojima wrote: post #49
klyrs wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your company should provide better audio equipment for those users.

They do, this guy insists on using his phone to join Zoom calls

I believe there are ways to disable phone for Zoom calls ... but that needs buy-in (you can disable audio conferencing, and say it's for "security reasons").

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#53

Post by smabie »

paskozdilar wrote: post #12
960design wrote: post #11

Stop wasting everyone's time with face to face meetings. Words are meaningless, easily misinterpreted and non binding. Written documentation of actions are easily referenced and binding.

> Words are meaningless, easily misinterpreted and non binding. I wish more people recognized this, instead of expecting everyone else to remember "that thing that we talked about, like, last week". I imagine it should be possible to create an organization where all communication would be just specification and documentation. I wonder if there is anything that can't in principle be done that way.

I mean in principle almost any form of communication is possible, but there's a reason you don't go to dinner with a friend and only communicate through post-it notes: because it is unnatural and inefficient.

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#54

Post by ArrayBoundCheck »

If live captioning fails for whatever reason and someone who types slowly needs to communicate, an option is asking the person to speak calmly and clearly as if speaking to an audience of 100 people. Calm simple language makes the guy at the back who can't hear every word understand you and a lip reader who may miss a few words would be able to understand

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#55

Post by jonathankoren »

robin_reala wrote: post #18
julianlam wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We also changed standups to mean that only the person holding the Bluetooth mic connected to his cochlear implant could speak: that had the added benefit of stopping standups from falling into solution-finding exercises. That's wonderful! As the parent of a child with bilateral hearing loss, this accommodation would help immensely in his future work and study environments.

It went even further than that: as he had difficulty in lip reading at a shallow angle in the original (too big) team circle it was the catalyst we needed to split the team into three smaller sub-teams, which also benefited the overall team’s performance.

Curb-cut Effect FTW!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#56

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

elil17 wrote: post #45
aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the relay for a meeting? Have you done this effectively in a work environment?

Yes, I have done many virtual meetings using VRS. You do have to ensure that you do everything a little slower if you’re using a lot of technical language because the terps need time to fingerspell. I’ve also used a video interpreting service for in person meetings (the terp is virtual everyone else is in person). That works well because private interpreter services will take the time to review a slide deck, notes, o…

In my experience, it hasn't been just a little slower — but that could of course be dependent on the response time of the callers I specifically was interacting with via the service.

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#57

Post by TomerrAharoni »

Check out talknagish.com. They have a phone app that converts phone calls into text in real-time (better accuracy than teams) and they have an add on for zoom/teams/meet that allows Deaf/HH users to read captions in real time and type instead or in addition to using their voice

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#58

Post by lostlogin »

bombcar wrote: post #52
HideousKojima wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, this guy insists on using his phone to join Zoom calls

I believe there are ways to disable phone for Zoom calls ... but that needs buy-in (you can disable audio conferencing, and say it's for "security reasons").

Surely a manager directly approaching the individual and saying “don’t do that” is a better approach?

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#59

Post by lostlogin »

GianFabien wrote: post #2

I am hard of hearing and lip read to assist with following conversations. I absolutely hate video conferencing tools. The sound is horrible and live captions are often incorrect. Very few people speak clearly enough for accurate captioning. I prefer to read and be shown rather than being told. I prefer email, and avoid voicemail. So if you are trying help your team mate, simply focus on alternatives to talking and li…

> so much good material is available in written form.

Have you found a slide towards video occuring across resources?

I can’t stand video as a learning tool, I want to skim read and focus on the bits that I don’t already know.

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#60

Post by [deleted] »

sdrothrock wrote: post #17
elil17 wrote: post #6

Is this a team mate at a US company? If so, note that Teams live captioning may not be enough to meet your non discrimination requirements. Your company may have a legal obligation to hire an ASL interpreter or human transcriber, including for in person meetings. My biggest recommendation is to use a phone call for audio because he can then use America’s free video relay service for ASL or captioned telephone service…

> Finally, something that people might not think about: If he misses something someone said and asks you what it was, never say "it's nothing" or "it wasn't important" or "it was just a joke" no matter how minor the comment was. Just repeat it no matter what. This is absolutely critical. It's hard enough to interrupt multiple times (especially when you need to ask about the same misheard thing multiple times) and bei…

[deleted]
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