Accommodations w/ Dana Feiner

If they don't understand how to read the word volcanic eruption, we can't just put the captions on the screen and assume that they're then gonna have full access to it. Like, we gotta consider how well they read as well. (upbeat music) - And this is Amplified a podcast by here in Indiana. Our aim for the show is to educate our audience on the services and support here in Indiana provides to the deaf and hard of hearing community in Indiana. My name is Britain Johnson. I am the host of the show and this is another episode. I am not gonna say the number of the episodes that I don't know when it's gonna be released, but here we are again. And to join me for the, I believe, is this the third time, Dana? - Yes, yes. - Third time. - Nothing's finer than Dana Finer. So welcome back to the show. - Thank you, thanks for having me back. - So it's been an interesting time to like put together at episode contents and figure out things to talk about. And we've, we know, we're doing some planning for additional episodes. Like I said, I don't know when this one's gonna come out, but I just wanna do like a quick little kind of gut check on the podcast with you. I talked to Ellen about this, so I'm gonna talk to you too. One, have you had anybody in the wild kind of say, like, hey, listen, and I liked it. Or like, have you gotten any initial feedback from people about what we're doing here? - I wouldn't call them from the wild. It's just been people that I personally know. And I said, hey, I made a podcast. You guys should listen to it. And then they did and got great feedback. But no one just kind of coming up to me on the street saying, hey, I heard you were on a podcast and I wasn't do it. - So nobody's fan-girling over you yet, okay. - No, not yet, maybe by my fourth episode. - Yeah, it's like, I was, I had to take my daughter to her speech therapy at St. Joe's and her SLP, like, was asking me about the show afterwards. And I'm like, oh, like in the wild. - Yeah, they're fan-girling over you. - Yeah, sometimes I, I don't know about that, but yeah. Everybody always complements the way I talk on this thing because then I'm like, it's 90% the microphone promise. I promise it is 90% the mic set up. But I digress. - Yeah, I've heard other people say, you have a voice for podcasting. A voice for podcasting and a face for radio. That's what that's the old joke. - Oh, that's so rude, that's not true. (laughing) - What anything else, like as anybody actually said, like, hey, it'd be cool if you do this. If you've got any other feedback on the show. - I did have a friend say, I'm gonna listen to it and write down some follow-up questions for you 'cause I wanna know more. And then came back with a whole bunch of questions. - Oh, that's good. - Yeah, I was like, oh, okay, you were really interested in it and put some thought into it, so that was cool. - Yeah, like, do you remember what kind of stuff were they asking? - No, I don't really remember. Oh gosh. I think it had more to do with what it was like when I went into people's homes for first steps. And if I had any kind of funny stories about anything like that, it was more of like a personal conversation rather than like a real professional one. - Got it, yeah. - Well, that's gonna be fun. That's gonna be fun sometimes too, but. - Yeah. You know those like Facebook memes that are like, this is what society thinks I do. This is what my parents think I do. This is what I really do. I made a joke with a first steps parent today about how like, think all my friends think all I do is just go in and sing to babies all day, but you know, there's a lot more behind it than that. - Oh, that's funny. Okay. I was gonna ask you one more thing. Oh, the conference. - Yeah. - You had a session at the conference. We talked about it briefly in one of the episodes you were on. Can you give me like for how was that? How was your first conference experience speaking? - It was great. I had the last session of the day. So people were a little bit sleepy after lunch and you know, kind of getting ready to go home, but I really tried to make it more interactive and so that people could come out of it with like actually having something accomplished, something that they could leave with and take to their jobs with them when they were done. And I had people say like this was one of the more, I can't remember that adjective that they use, but one of the more like beneficial ones are like, I got a lot out of this one. So I think it went well. And I got to meet someone that came from the state of Michigan where a very close friend of mine, her son actually was diagnosed with hearing loss when he was born about three years ago and it was his deaf and hard of hearing teacher in Michigan came to our conference and then watched my session. So that was just really cool, personal and professional worlds kind of colliding in one. - Awesome. - Yeah. So pro tip, if you're doing a speaking session like this again, I have found, and what I've done to have done this in the past, I haven't done a long time. It's a good reminder for me too. So I take the kids to Culver's a lot for, you know, I could, 'cause we're from Wisconsin. So it's like going home for us when we go out to dinner, we go to Culver's. - Yeah. - And the kids meals come with these tokens for a free scoop of custard ice cream, right? But we try not to over indulge the kids too much and we don't let them have it immediately every single time. So we end up having these piles and stacks of these free scooped-toed tokens. So one time I had to just get rid of them. And so I'm like, I had a speaking gig at a tech conference thing that I was doing and it gives a small room. It was like 20 people. And I'm like, okay, anybody who has a good question or just a question while I'm giving my talk, you get a free scoop of ice cream. And it was one of the same things. I was one of the last ones of the day, but all of a sudden, because there was ice cream on the line, everybody was paying attention and asking questions. (laughing) - I know ice cream is a good motivator for me and especially Culver's. - Yeah. So if you collect the free scoop tokens, highly recommend using them to your advantage if you're speaking at a thing like that. That's a great tip, yeah. - All right. We're supposed to be talking about like accessibility accommodations. - Accommodations. - Accommodations. - Yeah, Accommodations. - And we are not talking about hotels. - No. - Anything like this. You know, whenever I think about accommodations, that's generally where my head goes. But okay, from a, is this more of the DH side of the things where in terms of like teacher of the deaf, kind of to conversations or where does this, where does accommodations fall into the world of everything here in Indiana does? - Yes, for deaf and hard of hearing kids, certainly, but I really think anybody that has some form of a disability has some kind of accommodations that they make in their daily life just to make things accessible to them, whether it be, you know, someone who uses a wheelchair so that they can access mobility or a deaf and hard of hearing child who uses something like a remote microphone system to access the teacher's voice more clearly in a classroom. Really, it can be for anyone that just wants to access their environment a little bit better. - Okay, so is this different than just preferential or idealistic seating or locations within a classroom or is it that and more? - Yeah, that and more. Yeah, I like that you brought up the preferential seating 'cause I actually have this conversation with Ellen getting ready for this podcast and she said, I like the term planned seating better 'cause preferential, you kind of think front and center, right? Well, for children who are deaf or hard of hearing, that might not always be the best place for them because if you think about, they need to be able to hear all of the kids around them too. It's gonna be much harder for them to hear a child in the back if they're way up in the front or you might have a student with a unilateral hearing loss, like just a hearing loss in one ear. You don't necessarily wanna put them in the center, you might wanna put them on the side where they're better hearing or more typical hearing ear as more people around it, so yeah. - Yeah, in like the case in point for me, so like my wife and I just went to this Christmas concert and Fisher's the other night for Amy Grant and just old school, good old country Christmas kind of a thing. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - And like my wife, you know, is a die hard Amy Grant fan growing up in the late 80s, early 90s. - Mm-hmm. - And so as she's gone, we've done this, I don't know how many times this is it's been a lot and every single time like now she tries to get seats for You know like in the within the first like few five rows at least And so we were in like the third row from the stage and And I'm like when it comes to like live audio concerts like I like to be sort of in a place where the sound is optimal and If you're an audio person in a concert setting the most optimal sound position is Basically in the middle right in front of the sound booth where the where the guy mixing all the sound sits Like that's the best that's the best place to sit is right in front of that guy or girl And whoever's doing the doing the audio for the front of the front of the stage like that's where you want to be because that's where it'll sound the best So sitting up front like it was it was horrendous Were you also crane in your neck up at all like it really it wasn't it. Yeah, it wasn't that bad I mean it was in the Fisher's event center. So it's just like hockey arena kind of a thing So sure on you're on the floor in there. So they set it up, you know for For the concert setting. So it was it was an interesting venue. I'd never been there before like yeah Like sure we could see them and not have to like look at the big screens. So that's nice where you're you know you can at least kind of feel a little bit closer to the action but from a person from an auditory perception standpoint and like being connected to it Having a kid dealing with hearing issues and doing those like hearing is all I've ever paid attention to anymore and Like and it's only why that was like like yeah like sure it was a great sitting spot But like from an audio perspective it was just terrible and And I'm like like you know that yeah, this is the same kind of thing for like kids in And just or just people in general when they're dealing with locations of where they're deep gonna be Oh, this this idea of a preferential seat or a plan seat like yeah like It might be beneficial in theory most people think of oh sitting closer is better mm-hmm But in the end like when it comes to like auditory reception Just being somewhere where it's maybe not as loud Maybe it's more clear like clarity versus noise. I think is a big big deal Yes, and I'm wondering how often you kind of Evaluate a situation and you have to kind of look at that kind of context of trade-offs of clarity of reception versus noise Yeah, absolutely especially because you know a child can utilize their hearing aids to detect that sounds are there But really it's understanding what those sounds mean especially if it's language that is really the important part You can't really have full access to language if you don't understand what those sounds are and yeah in places like classrooms where I say learning is loud There's tons of background noise. There's kids that are walking around Maybe you're tapping a pencil So yeah that clarity is really important so that they can understand everything that the teacher is saying and Sometimes that seat needs to change based on how the environment is changing. So actually had this example come up last week At a school that I visit I have a student who uses two hearing aids And he has some other cognitive delays as well. So languages is quite low um And the teacher had some sort of like vocal Surgery and needed to utilize like a separate Microphones that her voice could be louder through a speaker for all of the class to hear Well, that had some interference with the my student with hearing loss and the microphone that he uses We were trying to troubleshoot all of that and I said you know I noticed that he's sitting on the back of the carpet compared to where you are What what was the purpose of putting him in that spot? And she said oh well I thought I would be teaching at the table that was right there next to him So that was planned to be closer to him But I ended up changing my spot and where I sat I said this is a wonderful opportunity to change where he sits as well That one preferential seating doesn't mean that's the one spot that you sit for the entire year Because it's the one time it's best like it's really got to be dynamic and move around with whatever Everybody needs at the time Well, and I think the changing of the arrangement of classrooms like that's become more of that You know, it's become more of a thing than when I was ever in school like you know Like we used to be always be you just have the nice even rows of seats You know and now they've all facing forward Yeah, and then now and now they've kind of moved to a lot of these like pod style things where the level like yeah four or five Desks all cut you know cluster together and facing each other Um, and I'm just like Is this really helping? I don't know but like I'm not in I'm not an education I'm educational seating expert It just kind of makes me question if it's really beneficial or not But but then they'll they'll do a rotational thing too periodically where you know Yeah, you'll be in one pod for one quarter of the year and then next quarter of the year They throw everything in a hat and shuffle you around and mix everything up again Mm-hmm. Hey, no, and so you get a kind of go back in and Re-remind people. Oh, yeah, like this kid actually needs to More or less stay in the same spot right or Need to have access visually as well, right? Like that student with the hearing loss might be at the desk that is closest to you But they're facing the complete opposite direction like we want them to be able to do to see your face as well to Have some lip reading cues or just you know, it's easier to hear if someone is looking at you then looking away from you So all of those things need to be taken into account with the planned seating yeah It's it's it's it's we're just kind of wild out like if you don't kind of Have those sort of interactions especially with faculty in its school to kind of work through this stuff if they're not Experienced in dealing with this as we have discovered um, like yeah, it's just Secondary thought doesn't even really come up like you know, they're and you know Teachers and and you know all the aids and everybody else in a school system like they have a lot of stuff to deal with admit you know, this i'm not that fault I'm not gonna fault them for not thinking about it. It's it's a small detail that has I think huge ramifications in terms of what a kid can perceive Mm-hmm definitely Um, what else? And from an adult perspective too, I will say I have a friend that I actually just met up with last night We try we have a group of three of us that like to get together for dinner and one girl uses a cochlear implant just on one side And then the other side she is deaf and every time that we get together she says oh can you please sit here and I'll please sit here And we just all make the accommodation for her seating so that one person is in front of her and one person is on On her implant side and no one is on on the ear that is deaf side. So yeah, just easy conversations quick We know when we meet up with her. Hey, where do we sit? She lets us know then we're all good to go But yeah, people who don't necessarily have interactions like that in their everyday life would really think oh do I need to ask that person Where do I sit like we just kind of all go sit but think about how that impacts to since we're in the holidays At the Thanksgiving table or at the Christmas table when there's many more family members around or Lots more conversations going on in the background like how conceding play a part in the home life not just in the school life too Like there was uh Did you this is this is going back a few years, but there was a TV series Um, I think I don't know right? I don't remember what it was on one of the cable networks So I think it was called switch to birth. Are you familiar with this show? Uh, I think I've heard of it, but I don't know that I ever watched it the premise of the show is two Two kids are born in the hospital and obviously they they get sent home with the wrong parents Mm-hmm One of the kids is born severe to profoundly deaf and You know, the other one is not and they end up kind of tradition like Not discovering this until the these girls are like in high school And so like all of a sudden They just you know, but it's drama ensues Yes, and it and it makes for some interesting conversations So like the kid whose deaf she gets with the the family that she was raised with They thinking this is her biological family when they're not You know, they opted to get her implants right away in the storyline And so she grows up the listening spoken language all the things they do They do a lot of deep dive kind of big-dead deaf culture versus hearing culture and things like that because they kind of World's collide a lot in there because as she's discovering where she came from from Def culture world all of a sudden she fully immerses herself into that side of things realizing that she has Family connections from her biological family that are all deaf and so it's just this whole other weird world But there's there was a scene in particular where I'm going with this Where like it was that kind of a thing was like a holiday thing and like Basically, everybody's talking at once. And like, she kind of has to like advocate for herself in the moment and just be like, "Hey, like, could you just go one at a time, please?" Yes. Because basically, you know, with everybody's talking to her, no one is talking. Right. And it was just sort of this kind of moment of like, "Yeah, just because you have devices or you have hearing aids or you have whatever, doesn't necessarily mean that it's access is there, either still kind of considerations that have to come into play." Yeah, definitely. Being able to drown out like that background noise or those conversations is really hard for kids with hearing loss to do. So yeah, that's in accommodation that we can make in the classroom as well, is that one person speaks at a time. And then if the teacher is the one that's wearing the remote microphone, it's also up to them to repeat what they hear other people say into the microphone so that the student can hear it again with that clarity. But yeah, I mean, I like that idea just for everyone regardless if you have a hearing loss or not. Yeah, I mean, it's just not so easy. It's just always think about that. And that's sort of the hard part, right? It's like, yeah, we live and breathe and deal with it every day. But that's just life for us. When we go places, we have to kind of remind people like, "Oh, like, you're gonna say something to my daughter like, you need to be a little closer maybe." You know, especially if we're in a loud place. Okay, in terms of other types of accommodations, you know, what are other things that people should be considering and trying to set up? I really encourage teachers to check for understanding with kids with hearing loss. And that does not mean the question, "Did you hear me?" Because what is a person posed with a yes or no question likely to do? Not and say, "Yeah." Uh-huh. Okay. Well, if I ask you instead, tell me what you heard me say, then you typically get big bug eyes, deer, and headlights. Oh, I don't know. Okay. So that tells me I need to repeat myself. So checking for understanding is a real big one. But definitely avoiding those yes or no questions, because it's too easy to just shake your head. Yes. I'm going to bring in an example from my family. So my mom, who maybe listened to this later, so, "Hey, mom." My mom uses hearing aid. She got them as an adult. And we were together for a family get together once. And I think either I had said a joke or my dad said a joke and everybody laughed, including my mom. And I just had a feeling she didn't actually hear it or understand it. So I said, "Mom, tell me what about that joke was funny." And she goes, "Oh, oh, actually, I don't know." So you were laughing because everyone else was laughing. I get it. But this would be a time where you say, "No, can you say that again?" Because I want to understand the joke. So there's also social ramifications of being able to make sure you're understanding what other people are saying. Yeah. I know. That's the social cues and connectivity and trying not to be left out and all that stuff. Those are the non-special, people in the kind of situation like, "I'm sure she's yeah, she just want to feel left out of the group." And so I was just like, "Oh, okay, I kind of got part of it." No, and you're smart. You learn coping mechanisms like that. But I as a teacher of the deaf kind of had in my head, she might not understand that. But someone that doesn't have that mindset would see, "Oh, she laughed at the joke. She got it. She understood. Move on." But I tried to take it one step further and say, "I'm going to check and see if she understood it." And she didn't. And that's okay. It made sense for the situation. Everybody was being really loud. But yeah. So in the classrooms, we got to be mindful of doing that too. What about non-auditory considerations? We talked about visual access for seeing the person talking and that kind of stuff. But what about other tools like captioning and that kind of stuff? You mentioned my favorite one. I love closed captions. I am a typically hearing individual, but I have closed captions on my TV all of the time, especially if there is an accent in the show that I am watching. Captions are great just because they do increase literacy as well. I can't tell you how many times I was watching. I think it was the great British baking show. And they were talking about these really French techniques. And I had absolutely no idea what it was called, but I could see the word and then go look it up later or something. So yeah, captions are my favorite. But when it comes to kids, we have to remember like what is their reading level as well. If they don't understand how to read the word volcanic eruption, we can't just put the captions on the screen and assume that they're then going to have full access to it. We got to consider how well they read as well. Just in the British baking show, I mean, there's just all kinds of Britishisms that you're just like say what now? If you're a traditional American like me, we're just having that on for certain, because they have so many different kind of strange sounding dialects. Yes. That words just like, what it's some of it sounds like another language even though it's to the you know, the King's English. Oh, yes, absolutely. And I think one of the episodes I was watching, it wasn't just the British baking show. It was some kind of bake off. And there were teams of chefs from all over the world. And sometimes they would talk in English with their accents, but then because they were a team, sometimes they would be talking to each other in their native language. And if I didn't have the captions on, I would have understood maybe like 30% of that show. And again, this is me as a typical hearing person. I can't imagine what it would be like for someone that already has more trouble accessing spoken language. I recommend we always have them on. I guess let me let me ask you this, Dana, there's increasing other ways that people can have accommodations set up. So like in a lot of hospital settings or clinic settings, sometimes there can be technology tools that your medical teams will use to communicate with patients and automated, all that sometimes automated captioning devices or actual big D-Deaf World will use live SL interpreters via FaceTime devices with a person doing SL interpretation. How does that kind of calculation of accommodation come into place for certain people when you're dealing with it in maybe not necessarily a school setting? You mean more like a live setting? Yeah, like if it's something where like somebody has like like like I guess case in point, like I took my daughter to New York to go see some Broadway shows and they have live captioning devices for the Broadway shows. Which are okay, I guess I would rate them as, you know, because they can sometimes be behind the dialogue that's happening live, you know, and behind this, this, the songs even that are being sung sometimes. So are there other things in other ways that I'm missing here in terms of providing additional access in other settings that aren't necessarily educational settings? Sure. So I think mostly what you're referring to is what we call cart, which stands for communication access real-time translation. And in addition to speaking at conference, I was also the one in charge of getting our cart services established because we had, you know, speakers that would have a slide deck, but we're really doing a lot more conversation. And we wanted to make sure that if people came to our conference and used hearing aids and wanted access to those captions that we provided it to them. So I worked with the cart services. And what we did there was we set up a Zoom meeting like you and I are on right now. And the transcriber would be on one end. They would hear the speakers from our Zoom. And then they would transcribe and they sent us a link. And so people could scan the QR code and then have access to the real-time captions there. It was only delayed by like a couple of seconds. So in this case is not an automated, large language model like transcribing this on the fly. This was a person doing it. That was a person doing it. Yes. I know that that can be a little bit difficult to obtain, especially like for schools. I'm just having that service there provided all of the time. So using apps like I would use Google Meet and then just have a blank meeting and turn on the captions and there you kind of have a bit of a transcript. And then there's other apps out there. I was looking some up earlier this week. Auto AI and then another one called Ava. And what was beneficial about those is that you could keep the transcripts for a period of time and then maybe like save them so that you could go back and read them later, which would be really good for like more of a lecture style setting, like maybe for someone in college or or in high school. Yeah, I think I remember seeing Ava when I was first getting launched because it's one that somebody can basically like run on their phone and like set it on the table and let it dinner or vent or something like that and then they people can kind of read the live caption as it goes by kind of a thing. Yeah, I thought that was cool. Yeah. It's fascinating how all the stuff kind of keeps moving and changing in all the different ways that things are going. All right, Dana, I think this has been fun. Have we missed anything in this discussion, but I don't want to end this before we prematurely hear. I don't think so. I think that we've hit on some of the major ones, but if anybody has any additional questions about maybe their student needing some accommodations in the classroom, they can always reach out to us here in Diana and neither myself or our family community liaison could speak to it just to get the people the support that they need. Perfect. Well, thanks a lot, Dana, and we will see you in the next one and many, many more after that. I'm sure. Yes. Happy holidays and a happy end of 2025 into 2026. On to next year. Yes. Thanks. Thanks. Have a good one. [Music]