Accessibility and Language Translation

I discovered a nice review of how the Echo360 system (formerly Apreso) has been deployed at Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf. The school has a long and interesting history as the world's expert on American Sign Language.

Similar to Creighton, Gallaudet initially focused their presentation recording effort on STEMS courses, and scaled up from there. Earl Parks, Gallaudet's manager of e-learning and video services says: "Realizing that math was a key area to address, the university began with that subject in 2005 with Apreso and has since added other courses as well, growing the program from four classes in spring 2006 to 20 classes in spring 2007."

Gallaudet has deployed Echo360 in conjunction with the Blackboard LMS. When viewing, learners see Gallaudet professors lecture in American Sign Language, while viewing slides, Web sites, or other content on the computer screen, along with any markups the instructor makes. But the presentations are silent - running captions display English language transcriptions across the bottom of the video screen (immediately adjacent to the video itself).

Echo360 Inc has worked closely with Gallaudet to polish its accessibility features, but the same captioning capability could be used for language translations of any type. For example, one could add Chinese language subtitles under a presentation delivered in English.