University of Wisconsin - Extension

MADISON ¿ Students at La Follette High School view any number of videos during their classes, from ¿To Kill a Mockingbird¿ to ¿Large Wood Power Tools II.¿ Yet, for some students, the videos lacked accessibility ¿ until now.

WPT provides expertise

Until Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) got involved with a La Follette project to convert the school¿s uncaptioned video collection to open captioning, deaf and hard-of-hearing students alternated between watching the video and an American Sign Language interpreter in order to understand the audio portion. Now students can read the dialogue, narration and description texts that are superimposed across the bottom of the screen.

From January to October 2000, WPT personnel worked at La Follette, the Madison Metropolitan School District¿s magnet school for the deaf and hard of hearing, to install used and borrowed captioning equipment and provide training on its use.

Grant provides equipment

To acquire new captioning equipment, WPT¿s Engineering Supervisor Paul Stoffel provided guidance on equipment specifications for a grant application to the Foundation for Madison¿s Public Schools. That grant came through in April 2002, allowing the school to purchase a time code-based VHS deck, a time code-reader computer card, stereo video monitors and an open-caption encoder. Software and operational training was provided by Irene Ekleberry, WPT¿s captioning coordinator.

Technology increases learning

That¿s a lot of hardware and software, but what it boils down to is using technology to increase human interaction and enrichment.

¿It means that the deaf and hard-of-hearing students have access to what everyone else has access to,¿ says Bobbie Zehner of La Follette High School.

Furthermore, she said the deaf and hard-of-hearing students who make their own videos as part of a classroom assignment can caption the videos and experience them along with classmates. Zehner said one student, whom she characterized as ¿not very effusive,¿ was just beaming when her video was shown and she could ¿hear¿ it thanks to the captioning.

Zehner credits WPT¿s Stoffel and Ekleberry for that student¿s joy, which ¿brought tears to my eyes.¿ She says, ¿We wanted this equipment and started asking around town about who could help us. Everyone kept referring me to Paul Stoffel, a guru, with Wisconsin Public Television.¿

Accessibility part of WPT¿s mission

For WPT¿s part, Ekleberry says, ¿It¿s a very important part of our service, of our mission and outreach. The more people we get captioning for, the more they can get out of programming.¿

The captioning work on the video collection continues. Ekleberry and Stoffel are on call for advice and assistance. Zehner looks forward to many more moments of students¿ enhanced educational experiences because of some VCRs, software, an encoder and a WPT willingness to help.