When is The New York Times going to put closed captions on their embedded news videos?
This is a well-written article, and I do appreciate it, but I don't appreciate looking at a Times talking heads video without the same closed caption feature on almost every television show, no matter how stupid or unpopular.
Being hard-of-hearing is not fun. The New York Times is not making it easier.
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The Big Banks that are to Big to fail have over charged impoverished people specifically the disabled for years. We should not be surprised over their egregious conduct. What is more perplexing is how most protocols were put in place to protect American tax payers and as expected by the unqualified Trump Administration he took the claws and teeth out of Regulators, giving corporation the power to do what they want with little to no culpability. A perfect example is this very article about disabled people. In a nutshell the Big Banks are creating shell hedgefund companies and doing improper things with zero over sight. Billions are being stolen from tax payers. I wonder how many Congressman, and Senators are on the take with ilict funds..... ?
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While there are disabled people who have never been able to work, there must be millions who worked and invested prior to becoming disabled. The firms’ excuses are ridiculous and come down to preferring technology to cut their costs, not because those with disabilities are unwilling to speak or sign with a customer service representative.
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It's shameful that after all these years (the ADA became effective in 1992) we are still having these issues.
It's shameful that people with disabilities overwhelmingly live in poverty, their whole lives.
It's just shameful. There's that whole quote about a society being viewed by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens - our society fails that test, totally.
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People with hearing and vision disabilities are definitely at a disadvantage in many parts of daily life. People with voice and mental illness disabilities need to be considered as well as companies attempt to serve these needs. The former may literally not be heard and the latter may need special patience when they are having flare-ups of their illness, as the illness can affect the ability to communicate clearly.
Always put people first--that is, a person with xyz disability, not an xyz person. Everyone has needs in this world, but not everyone is equal in their ability to get them fulfilled.
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This is as two-part comment, second part as comment to first.
Part I
I lost my hearing in infancy, around that critical time when I was learning what sounds and words meant. So I never learned to understand spoken speech -- and I learned to lip-read to follow and participate in conversations. I am therefore "speech-deaf".
I hear sounds and enjoy music just fine with a simple hearing aid, but ALL radio broadcasts and conversations where I can't see the speaker's lips sound just like a foreign language that I don't have. This means I cannot use the telephone (or for that matter, a cell phone) directly under any circumstances. We have captioned TV and on-line videos (which are so-so helpful) and assisted telecons using relay services like the one provided by Sprint -- which I estimate are effective about 75% of the time. The other 25% of ineffectiveness comes from people I call who are impatient or refuse to engage indirectly and I have often had to tell a relay assistant to not explain the relay (which they are required to do while initiating a telecon) in order to get anywhere at all. I cannot use telecoil facilities in public auditoriums and commercial movies.
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@Dr W
This is why it's advisable for dDeaf people to learn sign language. People say dDeaf people need speech and lipreading abilities to "get along" in the world and I absolutely agree that a dDeaf person should be able to speak and lipread as best they're able, but it's not always possible to rely on those skills.
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Part II
I am in a class of hard-of-hearing folks that have "fallen through the cracks". We need advocacy representation big time -- even though our disabilities are not immediately obvious. Many of us have perhaps "adapted too well" and are not seen as impaired, but the disabilities are really manifest at any level. I have often been regarded as stupid or sub-par on the IQ scale because of my apparent lack of communication skills, including inability to participate in conference proceedings (which appears to be a sine qua non for business relations). Or in conversations in dark and noisy restaurants (take note please, Zagat).
A little background info: I have two successful marriages (widowed the first time), an educational background extending into the postdoc level (PhD in a major science with university teaching stints) followed by four decades as senior scientist at a major laboratory -- and two more doing private research with publications in journals. All of my educational , socisl an dprofessional input has come from personally reading anything and the good fortune to have many understanding colleagues or companions of either sex to work with along the way.
I think my message with this comment is also for service providers of any type (banking, business, medical, etc.) who may read this: we may be disabled -- but we are not stupid, poor or irrelevant -- even if we first appear come off that way.
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Part III
I did not intend a third part but there was a 3 to 4 hour gap today when the NYT was not allowing comments to this blog to be posted, and that happened just between my "Part I and Part II " entries. Hence an appearance of a lack of continuity. All is copacetic now .... I hope!
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As someone with spasmodic dysphonia, a lesser-known and less common disability, a neurological condition affecting my vocal chords, I too, have experienced difficulty in communicating with entities, financial and otherwise. The quality of my voice is variable and although there are some temporary “treatments” for this condition, they are expensive and don’t provide consist results.
The impact on my speech has resulted in voice-recognition telephone systems disconnecting me on a regular basis because these computer-managed systems cannot detect my at-times whispery voice. This is especially frustrating with businesses whose phone systems don’t offer a numeric dialing alternative to spoken choices, including at one of our country’s premier tech firms.
This disability, which developed in middle age, has affected my employment, as well as social and familial relationships.
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Dear NYT: the first thing a person with a disability I told me when I advocated for more affordable housing was that she was not disabled -- she was a person with a disability; she was a person first. "Always put people and persons first".
A subtle point but very to the core. When I say a person with a disability somehow I am more reminded that this person has a life with hopes and dreams and knowledge and skills. When I say the disabled or wheel chair boundthe idea of a person seems pushed to the background.
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The loss of 75% of my hearing introduced a panoply of challenges, including significant loss of income. It didn't matter to my employer at the time that a workplace injury contributed to the hearing loss. They were too angry about losing the Worker's Compensation case. WC award didn't completely cover the expensive hearing aids (Phonak). Hearing loss in an invisible disability, you'll never even notice my hearing aids. They barely improve things these days. Implants are next, for those that can afford them. Only understanding clients will dare employ someone that cannot clearly hear what they're saying. I work for people like that now.
I lost the ability to hear specific sounds, so my brain must fill in the missing vowels. Photography shoots are more awkward, teaching is more challenging. 4 tones of tinnitus, day and night, from now on. Latest diagnosis includes evidence of type of dementia related to hearing loss, wonderful add-on, I mused at the time.
State and federal government agencies and medical-industry employers are more likely to tolerate those with disabilities. I fit right in at Senior centers and teaching for the Board of Elections every two years. Average age of elections workers is 71. Appreciate them the next time you vote.
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As someone who's advocated for disability civil rights, I'm glad to see this article in the NYT and to learn from it.
As someone who has, and knows other really bright people with, attention and/or visual tracking differences, I find it ironic that the NYT itself refuses to make its product(s) fully accessible by, among other things, have a feature to turn off video -- especially video ads -- that actually works (I've been trying for some years now, but the toggle in settings never has worked), and a setting feature that allows reader-users to adjust font and point size and contrast within the NYT app itself. Although one's device settings may help in providing access in those ways, my experience is that certain NYT articles and captions etc. regularly override or fail to recognize the device's settings. Another reasonable accommodation would be toggle for audio descriptions of illustrations (video, graphics, photos, etc.) and that reads the articles aloud.
It's been about 30 years, or the better part of 360 Months, since the Americans with Disabilities Act put the NYT on (further) notice that it needs to be more accessible. It's half-past 2019; the esteemed NYT can, and should, do better.
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This very comment section is an example: We've yet to figure out how, especially on mobile devices, to adjust the point size, kerning, font or spacing to make it more accessible.
And gosh darn it -- once again unable to turn off or eliminate distracting, multi-colored, often moving/streaming ads.
Yes, NYT gets income from ads it runs or allows to be run via its app; but we subscribe and that should afford us the ability to turn off ads -- especially when/since they frequently impede full access to the articles.
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Yes please to the ability to override the font setting in app to enlarge letters. So frustrating. I sometimes just skip the articles with too small font because I can't read them. Grrr.
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@Longtime Subscriber
If you add an ad blocker to your phone or computer, you can block flash ads. You can also stop them temporarily by clicking on the little x at the top right hand corner. I do that frequently because they distract me and are very annoying.
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Oof. Your home-page blurb says blind and deaf people "are in the labor force at lower rates than the able-bodied." But blind and deaf people navigate the world, earn academic degrees, compete in sports. The attitude that they are somehow not "able-bodied" is exactly what is suppressing their workforce participation. Couldn't that text be improved by writing "at lower rates than sighted and hearing people"?
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Well said. Thank you.
So much of what is disabling is others' attitudes, which are influenced in part by language choices; as well as the methodological and built environment we as a society create.
Similar to race, significant aspects of disability are social constructs and, as such, also political/politically determined.
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