moth@dartmouth.edu (Tom Leathrum) (05/16/91)
Index Number: 15702 This story came to me over e-mail a few weeks ago. I decided to share it with the group. It has been through about a half dozen forwards, so I trimmed out all the extra header stuff. I have no idea who originally wrote it. Regards, Tom Leathrum moth@dartmouth.edu ------------------ Today's EDUCOM keynote speech, by former President Jimmy Carter was open-captioned for the hearing impaired. The big-video display in the auditorium showed a textual representation of the speech as Carter spoke. This was provided by "11-Alive," an Atlanta television station. The system must have used some kind of voice-recognition algorithm, because no human typist that I know could have kept up with the speaker at times. The weakness of the voice-recognition system was made painfully obvious to attendees, when those with the ability to hear the presentation noticed substitutions like: "man well" noriega, "wak dem iks" for academics, "oath yope yam" for Ethiopia, "Jap neens" for Japanese, "My Robe by" N Nairobi for "Ken Yeah" for Kenya, "Home Jean yes" for homogeneous. Carter's speech was thoughtful and moving (he talked about academia's moral responsibilities to the third world), but the seriousness of the speech was undercut by the occasional giggle from the audience. Later in the speech, human control seemed to be asserted a bit more, and "another country" was frequently substituted for the name of a third-world country, but Carter must have been most puzzled when he explained that the Carter Foundation was nonpartisan, and that "Prominent Republicans" worked closely with him on every major project. It was presented to the hearing-impaired (and to the rest of us) as "Prominent Rubble Cans." Of course, the audience broke into laughter, and I suspect he still doesn't know why. I'm a strong supporter for appropriate adaptive technology, but a low-tech solution (an ASL interpreter) would have been less distracting and reached many (though not all) of the hearing-impaired.