Re: WA - background-image in CSS

Access Systems wrote:

> good question?? now we need some good answers.  back to my sign language
> interpeter illustration.. in the middle of a session a fire engine goes by
> outside, everyone turns, shouldn't the hearing impaired person know the
> reason for the sudden lack of attention??  or if a baby is crying and
> people are getting distracted and finally getting up and leaving, does the
> hearing impaired person get the impresion that they are the only ones'
> getting this or finding it interesting, they might if they did not know
> the baby was crying in the background.
>   in neither case would the speaker consider either of these "Sounds" as
> adding anything to the speech.


Ah, this is exactly my point. If I were deaf and attending this lecture, 
I would certainly want to know about the fire engine and the crying 
baby. I think that the interpreter should be thinking about the 
experience as a whole.

The problem with this is that those who can hear the speaker are getting 
information through several senses simultaneously and these senses may 
coordinate with each other. So the combination of a sound and a gesture 
might mean something more than simply the sum of the two.

But for the interpreter, it may be very difficult to convey this same 
information with the limited means available. And, of course, any 
interpretation means that half of the audience is getting the 
information second hand. This is certainly true for captions on 
television. My mother uses them sometimes, and I've often been surprised 
by how much information is missed.

Charles F. Munat
Seattle, Washington

Received on Friday, 18 January 2002 23:05:33 UTC