Talk to Text Alternative Inside a Classroom

By: Kelly Ryan

214-Assignmnet #9

I chose an article about alternative ways for a hearing-impaired student to

receive classroom instruction. This topic is interesting to me because, I have a

cousin that was born with a slight birth defect that left her completely deaf by the

time she was 2 years old. Over the years, I have learned some very basic sign

language. When my cousin was growing up she always preferred to draw or write

out what she wanted. When she started middle school, her parents decided to

mainstream her education. Once placed in the public-school system she was

assigned an interrupter that assisted in her classes. However, in just a few short

months, she informed her parents that she would prefer to read the classroom

instruction. She shared with me through the years that she preferred reading,

because she was able to read at her own pace. When a sign language interrupter

was in front of her, she felt they would go to fast for her, in which she often felt that

she took more time to understand less information. By having her classroom

equipped with a talk to text program would have helped my cousin tremendously.

The article I read spoke about how my cousins scenario is becoming more

popular in todays generation. That 75% of deaf students at the K-12 level now are

enrolled in regular education classrooms (Karchmer & Mitchell, 2003). By providing

a talk to text system incorporated in an electronic white board, it would greatly

improve the ability for the hearing-impaired students to learn at their own pace per

se. All students with disabilities learn differently, and in the case of my cousin,

writing new information down on paper helped her to learn and retain it better. In

my opinion, if classrooms offered an alternative form of technology for the hearing

impaired similar to closed captions on an electronic white board, it would make a

tremendous difference in their education.

Reference

Karchmer MA, Mitchell RE. Marschark M, Spencer PE. Demographic and

achievement characteristics of deaf and hard of hearing students, Oxford handbook

of deaf studies, language, and education, 2003 New YorkOxford University

Press(pg. 21-37)

Marc Marschark, Greg Leigh, Patricia Sapere, Denis Burnham, Carol Convertino,

Michael Stinson, Harry Knoors, Mathijs P. J. Vervloed, William Noble; Benefits of Sign

Language Interpreting and Text Alternatives for Deaf Students' Classroom Learning.

J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ 2006; 11 (4): 421-437. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enl013

https://academic.oup.com/jdsde/article/11/4/421/411839/Benefits-of-Sign-Language-

Interpreting-and-Text