Other accessible education resources

This section covers other education projects and programs in Australia and overseas.

• Australian resources
• Overseas resources 

Australian resources

Ai-Live™

Deafness services innovator Ai-Media has now launched ‘Ai-Live™’,  a world-first service that provides live captioning of classes to deaf and hearing impaired students in mainstream schools, at the Sixth National Deafness Summit in Sydney. The service, combined with the technologies used in Media Access Australia’s Classroom Access Project pilot, means that deaf students in Australian schools could soon experience full access in mainstream Australian schools.

Ai-Live™ and the Classroom Access Project complement each other by providing a suite of technologies that could provide full access for deaf and hearing impaired students, supplementing the class with better and more compatible sound technology and visual information, so students who experience this model will have every opportunity to fulfil their learning potential.

Ai-Live™ uses broadband technology and a unique Australian-designed system that delivers live captioning into classrooms via a laptop, so that students with hearing impairments can easily follow any teacher’s lesson.

The Classroom Access Project merges technologies which include an Interactive White Board (IWB), a Soundfield amplification system and the student’s own FM devices, and is supported by MAA’s database of educational captioned resources, the Accessible Education Database.

FOXTEL Backstage Access

Accessible media was top of the list at FOXTEL Television Centre during an access event for students from mainstream schools who are Deaf or have hearing impairment, supported by the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (RIDBC).

This event and the original event in November 2008, was the culmination of the continued liaison and collaboration between FOXTEL, RIDBC, AI Media and Media Access Australia to produce an event that streamlined the Backstage Access concept for this particular group of students.

The students use assistive listening devices, such as hearing aids, cochlear implants and FM systems, however, they at times experience difficulties and frustrations accessing curriculum support materials presented in electronic forms, such as DVDs, TV programs, videos and Internet downloads. FOXTEL Backstage Access immersed these students in accessible media opportunities – real time captioning of the event, viewing of captioned DVD content, demonstrations of how captions are made and used and hands-on captioning experience. This highlighting of the importance of captions as a vital access tool will give students more confidence in regard to this access in their school environments.

The event provided opportunities for students to understand more about TV and its delivery, with relevance to the curriculum, and opportunities to learn about the processes of television making. It culminated in a tour of Nickelodeon and the FOXTEL Television Centre, so that students could see behind the scenes and look more closely at different areas of production.

A combination of fun and education was the order of the day and friendships were forged among students and the parents who were in attendance.

The ongoing commitment to the process of captioned educational access demonstrated on the day, by the organisations involved, was a positive snapshot of what is possible.

 

Overseas resources

Described and captioned media program

The most comprehensive education media program in the world is the Described and Captioned Media Program operating in the USA.  This program aims to provide captioned and audio described DVD and downloads for school-age students across the country.  It is administered from Spartanburg South Carolina and includes a centralised distribution system.

For more information see the DCMP website.

Read Captions Across America campaign

Each year the American National Education Association (NEA) runs a nationwide reading program.  For the last four years this has been supplemented by the “Read Captions Across America” campaign run by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).

The campaign commences in March, but is a year-long event.  The campaign targets captioned media, including DVD, CD-Rom and Internet streaming as an important tool for teaching reading for both deaf and hearing children.  The DCMP organises and promotes the event and provides captioned materials via its loan service. 

NEA President Reg Weaver supports the co-reading program using captions.  “Just as the text jumps off the page in a good book for conventional readers, captioned reading makes words come to life on the screen.”

“We all need something to spark our interest in books and captioned reading is an excellent tool to help young readers.”

The DCMP website contains comprehensive resources for the program, including tips sheets, available media, downloadable bookmarks and event information.  These can be found at the Read Captions Across America website.

UK film program

School students in the UK are able to watch movies at the cinema with captions and audio description as part of the popular National Schools Film Week (NSFW) included captioned sessions for the first time in 2007.  Now in its 15th year, National Schools Film Week allows primary and secondary school children to see free movies across the United Kingdom.  

Last year more than 400,000 children participated and saw 2,500 films in over five hundred cinemas throughout the UK. Every school in the UK received the National Schools Film Week program. It detailed all the free cinema shows taking place nationwide, during National Schools Film Week, which is held each year in Oct-Nov.

For more information see the NSFW website.