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Relay Conference Captioning (RCC) Working in New Jersey
New Jersey NRCS employee Doreen Dougherty is enthusiastic about her
experience with Relay Conference Captioning (RCC) |
When hearing-impaired New Jersey NRCS employee Doreen Dougherty received
information about Relay Conference
Captioning (RCC) from Nancy Paolini, New Jersey NRCS Disability Emphasis
Program Manager, she was definitely interested. Although Doreen had her
doubts as to how well a real-time captioned event would actually work, she
checked out the RCC website where she learned how the service offers deaf and
hard-of hearing individuals a means to participate in meetings, phone calls,
video conferences, and multi-party conference calls without the services of a
sign language interpreter on site. The service is provided free to all Federal
workers by Sprint and Federal Relay and is managed by the General Services
Administration. “For someone who had never before been able to participate in a
teleconference without the help of a sign language interpreter, this seemed just
too good to be true,” Doreen said.
Doreen’s first telenet conference using RCC convinced her of the value of this
technology. “It’s difficult to watch an interpreter and my computer screen
simultaneously during a teleconference or net meeting,” she said. “To use the
captioning service, I opened two windows on my computer screen. The captioning
site where the meeting dialogue was being transcribed was displayed on one side
of my screen; the telenet conference site was on the other. I found I could
easily keep up with both.”
Doreen could also ask questions during the meeting. “I typed what I wanted to
say in a dialogue box directed to the captioner, who would then speak the text on
my behalf.” As an additional benefit, “I had a transcript of the entire
conference that I could print out once it was over,” she said.
“From start to finish, the entire process was simple and effective. I
registered on-line, which took less than five minutes, and received an e-mail
confirmation immediately,” Doreen said. RCC requires 48-hours advance notice to
supply a captioner for an event. The lead time for procuring a sign
language interpreter is normally two weeks. “
Your contact is Barbara Phillips,
NRCS public affairs specialist, at 732-537-6044.
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