Broken Bay in disabilities conundrum

By Anthony Barich
Deaf and hearing-impaired people have been prevented from participating in four e-conferences run online by the Broken Bay Institute as it has been unable to adapt technology to include captioning or signing.

The BBI has, in conjunction with the Australian Bishops, hosted four e-conferences since June last year, with thousands across the globe following the conferences on websites.
Participants were drawn from schools, parishes, hospitals, prisons, private groups, universities, religious orders and Church agencies for the Jesus the Christ e-conference on 16 September, but did not have captioning or signing to enable deaf and hearing impaired people participate.
“Pleas to have these conferences captioned have fallen on deaf ears,” Fr Paul Pitzen, chaplain to Emmanuel Centre, Perth’s Archdiocesan centre run for and by people with disabilities, said on the CathNews blog that promoted the event.
“Pity that we will miss out on the wisdom and insights of those who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. One day, please God, when we give a banquet we really will invite the people Jesus asked us to invite.”
Broken Bay’s diocesan communications manager Annie Carrett told The Record that BBI was in contact with Sydney’s Archdiocesan Ephpheta Centre for Deaf and Hearing Impaired People to organise someone to sign for the online forum, but “they fell through at the last minute”.
“This is designed to be seen on computers, so it’s difficult and can be cramped. We don’t get funding for this, so this is a gift that our Bishops give to the people of Australia. None of the areas around Australia contribute in any way to this,” Ms Carrett said. Emmanuel Centre coordinator Barbara Harris said she understands modern technology is difficult to understand and people shy away from it, but BBI is providing a “fantastic initiative, yet people with hard of hearing and deaf are missing out on it, and all it requires is a bit of organisation in the first instance”.
Ephpheta’s official interpreter for the deaf, Nicole Clark, said much discussion about helping the deaf for the Jesus the Christ e-conference was done “in the 11th hour”.
As the next e-conference, to be themed around the Holy Spirit, is not until 19 May next year, she suggested to BBI that work be done to ensure something is in place by then. Ms Carrett told The Record that the BBI could not guarantee this could be done by then, but stressed that captioning the event “has been a very high priority”.
“Hopefully we will offer a captioned (e-conference) next time, but not live, we can offer it as a DVD so people can experience it, at the moment complications with the technology and live broadcast is a bit beyond us,” she said.
“We haven’t discounted, it, we’re just working really hard on it.
“We’re really committed to reach out every avenue to make these things available.”
Fr Pitzen told The Record that Adelaide company Vividas provided live captioning on 17 June at a cost of $165 an hour when National Liturgy Commission head Fr Peter Williams addressed Perth liturgists on the new Missal translations at the Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre in Westminster.
In a first for Australia, the Emmanuel Centre had arranged for an internet connection to send an audio feed to Adelaide where a stenographer typed up what she heard and sent it back to Perth to be projected on the large screen.
The stenographer was very accurate and quick.
Emmanuel coordinator Barbara Harris interpreted proceedings in sign language. Deaf and hard of hearing people present at Fr Williams’ talk said, “it was really nice to have the text on the screen because if we turned away from Barbara or we don’t know sign language because we have become deafened later in life, we can still hear. We could catch up on what we missed by looking at the screen.”
The captioning service Emmanuel used for Fr Williams’ visit is out of action until November but is sourcing another in time for the Perth Archdiocese’s Seek2010 conference at Riverton from 7-9 October.
The captioning process could even be easier for the e-conference if the captioners can be given prepared talks ahead of time to help them deal with complicated ecclesial words. “It can be done easily,” Fr Pitzen said.
Captioning will be provided for the Jesus the Christ conference when it is sold as a DVD package – which Fr Pitzen said is “better than nothing”, but having it live is “no drama either because Vividas can take whatever streams and layers you want to send them – two video inputs, one with regular video of what’s happening and one with captioning, and can super-impose it – and it doesn’t cost any extra as they’ll just put on whatever they’re fed”.
“Broken Bay should know that because I told them they can do it that way,” Fr Pitzen said.
“When people are talking it comes with captions as a video feed and they send both off to vividas. It’s not difficult.”
Nicole Clark emailed BBI after its first e-confernece on St Luke on 4 November, 2009 congratulating it on a “wonderful presentation”, impressed with quality of content, and suggested that, should BBI consider making it accessible to deaf people, she could assist them in explaining what they would need to do – “and they responded very positively, I received a phone call very soon after”.