John Clark is SUCH a good writer on so many things.
I've heard some VI people say extensive visual descriptions are annoying and they prefer either none or a much more concise version. I recently found Judy Heumann's YouTube and have been skipping the too-lengthy audio descriptions in the video for that reasons. It would be much quicker to say "Judy is a 72yr old white dark haired woman with a huge smile and she's in the foyer of her apartment" than the 3-4x length of that. Sometimes race does matter cos Judy talks with disabled people of colour a lot. I think that's one of those things that will hopefully evolve to a shorter more useful thing when people settle down from being over-zealous in starting at all.
I've got a plugin "Alt or Not" for Twitter webpage in the browser so I can read ALT text. Which is SO interesting as I can see who does ALT at all, and how different people use it. I sometimes don't really understand people's images (dunno why, my visual acuity is fine, but I am aphantasic) but the ALT helps me work out what THEY intended by the photo. Some people get SO hung up on perfection that they won't even try which pisses me off. I'd rather people tried and then eavesdropped on VI folk talking and tweak as they go. I like that when you ALT Gary you explain WHO he is cos that is as important as what he's doing in a pic, cos he's an immense part of your life. Whereas if you had a Random Dog it'd be a different ALT tone.
I think this not interested also a bit similar to some deaf people and music or birdsong. Hearies go on about "oh but you can't hear the birds" and it's a big joke in the deaf community that many of us don't like the sound of birds - I think they sound like squeaky hinges and go on and on! A CI using friend, completely deaf from birth was eventually able to hear birds and his reply was "shoot the fuckers" which of course cracks us all up! Hearies are appalled and horrified.
I can't really do films, I find them very tiring to watch even with captions and tend to miss visual information cos I can't process it and captions fast enough. I am terrible at remembering what happened afterwards so I will have zero memory of films I have definitely seen. Being aphantasic may also not help here. I don't fight cinema captions access stuff for this reason cos I can't bring myself to care enough to use the activism spoons I have.
I can hear music, and many deaf people love it but I think my experience is fundamentally different to that of hearing people. I have discovered that while I can enjoy music if I've had a LOT of repetition, my "memory" for it is AWFUL so I can't recreate most of it in my head easily. I have however discovered I love properly BSL signed music by very competent deaf signers and indeed a few of the highly qualified/experienced interpreters. Same for poetry, in English text is does nothing for me 90% of the time, but in BSL it gets me every time... I'm not even fluent or native as a signer, but I think anything in English is brain whereas BSL is definitely an emotive heart language.
Clark's comments on ASL interpreters is also interesting. I don't know enough about UK interpreters to know if they have the strict accuracy things here to, but I do know there's research that shows that deaf people having preferred interpreters correlates to a higher quality access to the relevant information. Aka deaf people aren't just being picky, but it's critical that the interpreter is really good for them. I do know there is official debate on strict accuracy vs other modalities and that a lot comes down to how the interpreter/others engage with one another. Especially after some high profile BSL terping fails which I personally witnessed and actually raised as formal complaints with NRCPD.
I've only recently used interpreters enough to get a comparative sense of quality and reading Clark's comments about what was conveyed correlates to my sense of which interpreters "read the room" and could "read me" while doing hydro so were able to pick up when I was "watching the physio speaking/demoing", then usually watching them for a consecutive interpretation and when I was concentrating on physio and when they should interrupt e.g. physio was interrupting. Two or three of the interpreters grokked this structure without explanation, some didn't and needed to be told, and some couldn't seem to grok that they needed to focus and that just cos I was watching the physio talk, didn't mean I could understand it all, or understand accurately and that they still needed to pay attention to the physio and be ready to terp when I asked for it. I reckon after familiarity I got to 50% understanding of physio through guesswork/visuals alone but I usually got the BSL as well to be sure as sometimes I missed finer details like "put all your weight on badleg" etc. Alongside that I also noticed which interpreters followed my CLEAR instruction given at the start for BSL not SSE (signed supported English - signs in Englishy word order)... Despite my own sign being SSEish, I prefer BSL to be signed TO me - which some terps grokked and some did not. I rejected 2 terps to the agency, 1 for SSEish sign I couldn't understand at all and 1 for not paying attention and bad attitude so not signing stuff properly).
Or thinking of the day when there was a loud BANG! and everyone flinched and that day's interpreter (whose sign name should be 'Am I bovvered?...') didn't even convey what had happened to me. I had to work out that someone behind me DROPPED something and made a big noise... I had to find out from partner later the details (wtf grammar here - the details later - is BSL mashing my English again!)... Compare to excellent terp where there was a kerfuffle or something happening and I wasn't concentrating too hard, she'd just cue me in.
I wonder if in disability space, that while we sometimes get it a bit wrong (excessive visual descriptions) there can be an element of people knowing they're not a professional terp/describer/etc so if helping one another, will ask "what do you want/need?" and seeking feedback and views to know the range of likely. And that we need to keep talking about these things like "not interested kthx" and recognising it will differ between people with ostensibly similar impairments.
I also loved the discussion around protactile, a language by and for deafblind people and how they've adapted games totally rather than partially. I don't know how prevalent protactile is here at all. I must ask around.
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baggyeyes
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-19 03:34 pm (UTC)John Clark is SUCH a good writer on so many things.
I've heard some VI people say extensive visual descriptions are annoying and they prefer either none or a much more concise version. I recently found Judy Heumann's YouTube and have been skipping the too-lengthy audio descriptions in the video for that reasons. It would be much quicker to say "Judy is a 72yr old white dark haired woman with a huge smile and she's in the foyer of her apartment" than the 3-4x length of that. Sometimes race does matter cos Judy talks with disabled people of colour a lot. I think that's one of those things that will hopefully evolve to a shorter more useful thing when people settle down from being over-zealous in starting at all.
I've got a plugin "Alt or Not" for Twitter webpage in the browser so I can read ALT text. Which is SO interesting as I can see who does ALT at all, and how different people use it. I sometimes don't really understand people's images (dunno why, my visual acuity is fine, but I am aphantasic) but the ALT helps me work out what THEY intended by the photo. Some people get SO hung up on perfection that they won't even try which pisses me off. I'd rather people tried and then eavesdropped on VI folk talking and tweak as they go. I like that when you ALT Gary you explain WHO he is cos that is as important as what he's doing in a pic, cos he's an immense part of your life. Whereas if you had a Random Dog it'd be a different ALT tone.
I think this not interested also a bit similar to some deaf people and music or birdsong. Hearies go on about "oh but you can't hear the birds" and it's a big joke in the deaf community that many of us don't like the sound of birds - I think they sound like squeaky hinges and go on and on! A CI using friend, completely deaf from birth was eventually able to hear birds and his reply was "shoot the fuckers" which of course cracks us all up! Hearies are appalled and horrified.
I can't really do films, I find them very tiring to watch even with captions and tend to miss visual information cos I can't process it and captions fast enough. I am terrible at remembering what happened afterwards so I will have zero memory of films I have definitely seen. Being aphantasic may also not help here. I don't fight cinema captions access stuff for this reason cos I can't bring myself to care enough to use the activism spoons I have.
I can hear music, and many deaf people love it but I think my experience is fundamentally different to that of hearing people. I have discovered that while I can enjoy music if I've had a LOT of repetition, my "memory" for it is AWFUL so I can't recreate most of it in my head easily. I have however discovered I love properly BSL signed music by very competent deaf signers and indeed a few of the highly qualified/experienced interpreters. Same for poetry, in English text is does nothing for me 90% of the time, but in BSL it gets me every time... I'm not even fluent or native as a signer, but I think anything in English is brain whereas BSL is definitely an emotive heart language.
Clark's comments on ASL interpreters is also interesting. I don't know enough about UK interpreters to know if they have the strict accuracy things here to, but I do know there's research that shows that deaf people having preferred interpreters correlates to a higher quality access to the relevant information. Aka deaf people aren't just being picky, but it's critical that the interpreter is really good for them. I do know there is official debate on strict accuracy vs other modalities and that a lot comes down to how the interpreter/others engage with one another. Especially after some high profile BSL terping fails which I personally witnessed and actually raised as formal complaints with NRCPD.
I've only recently used interpreters enough to get a comparative sense of quality and reading Clark's comments about what was conveyed correlates to my sense of which interpreters "read the room" and could "read me" while doing hydro so were able to pick up when I was "watching the physio speaking/demoing", then usually watching them for a consecutive interpretation and when I was concentrating on physio and when they should interrupt e.g. physio was interrupting. Two or three of the interpreters grokked this structure without explanation, some didn't and needed to be told, and some couldn't seem to grok that they needed to focus and that just cos I was watching the physio talk, didn't mean I could understand it all, or understand accurately and that they still needed to pay attention to the physio and be ready to terp when I asked for it. I reckon after familiarity I got to 50% understanding of physio through guesswork/visuals alone but I usually got the BSL as well to be sure as sometimes I missed finer details like "put all your weight on badleg" etc. Alongside that I also noticed which interpreters followed my CLEAR instruction given at the start for BSL not SSE (signed supported English - signs in Englishy word order)... Despite my own sign being SSEish, I prefer BSL to be signed TO me - which some terps grokked and some did not. I rejected 2 terps to the agency, 1 for SSEish sign I couldn't understand at all and 1 for not paying attention and bad attitude so not signing stuff properly).
Or thinking of the day when there was a loud BANG! and everyone flinched and that day's interpreter (whose sign name should be 'Am I bovvered?...') didn't even convey what had happened to me. I had to work out that someone behind me DROPPED something and made a big noise... I had to find out from partner later the details (wtf grammar here - the details later - is BSL mashing my English again!)... Compare to excellent terp where there was a kerfuffle or something happening and I wasn't concentrating too hard, she'd just cue me in.
I wonder if in disability space, that while we sometimes get it a bit wrong (excessive visual descriptions) there can be an element of people knowing they're not a professional terp/describer/etc so if helping one another, will ask "what do you want/need?" and seeking feedback and views to know the range of likely. And that we need to keep talking about these things like "not interested kthx" and recognising it will differ between people with ostensibly similar impairments.
I also loved the discussion around protactile, a language by and for deafblind people and how they've adapted games totally rather than partially. I don't know how prevalent protactile is here at all. I must ask around.