ATU699 – Relay Conference Captioning with Greg Gantt

Hi, this is Greg Gantt. I am the outreach coordinator for InTRAC, which provides Relay Indiana services, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 699 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on October 18th, 2024.

On today’s show, we are super excited to welcome Greg Gantt. He is the community relations manager for InTRAC here in Indiana and he’s here to tell us about some of the great things InTRAC does as well as their new Relay Conference. Captioning service. Listeners, as you may know, InTRAC is also the generous sponsor of our captions here at Assistive Technology Update, and we’re very thankful for their assistance. Listeners today, Greg will be using ASL to communicate and you will hear the interpreter here on the show interpreting the ASL for Greg and working as the go-between between him and myself.

Listeners, don’t forget you can always reach out to us. You can shoot us an email at Tech@Eastersealscrossroads.org or call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. We love getting your questions, your comments, and your input on future guests. So without any further ado, let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Listeners, we are super excited to have Greg Gantt from Indiana Relay Services or InTRAC here to tell us all about a great new service that they have available called Relay Conference Captioning. We can’t wait to learn all about it and the other great services available from InTRAC. Greg, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

Yeah, I am excited to talk about this amazing new service, but before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Certainly. I am a deaf individual. I was born deaf and raised deaf. I went to the Indiana School for the Deaf here and then I graduated from Gallaudet University, which is a university for deaf and hard of hearing individuals located in Washington, D.C. I got a business degree at Gallaudet and I came to Indianapolis and worked for deaf and hard of hearing services under the state for a few years. I also work in the deaf community and in the deaf community services area. I’ve worked for over seven years before I moved to work at Sprint, which now has become T-Mobile. We provide relay services and I’ve done that for around 11 years as a manager. Ever since then, I’ve worked in this for over 15 years with InTRAC. Working as the outreach coordinator with InTRAC has been a great experience. I have a wife, I have two kids and they are out of the house now, so I’m an empty nester. I like camping, backpacking, I like golfing, so that’s just a little bit about me.

Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you so much Greg, and I guess start us off by telling us a little bit about InTRAC.

Certainly. InTRAC is an abbreviation. Today we actually call it Indiana Telecommunication Relay Access Corporation, and it’s a non-profit corporation and the sole purpose of InTRAC is to provide relay services to deaf and hard of hearing and individuals with speech disabilities and hearing people who may rely on relay services. We are under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed back in 1990 that requires each state to provide relay services.

Indiana had decided to move ahead and found InTRAC for that exact purpose, to provide and maintain relay services within the state of Indiana following the guidelines from the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission and the Americans with Disabilities Act. InTRAC provides services which we call under Relay Indiana, which allows individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing or have other disabilities to be able to communicate with their hearing pals, their hearing folks.

Back in the day in 1990, up until around 2005, everything was TTY based, text-based communication, and so deaf people were required to type their message, which was then sent to an operator, a third party operator who would read the message on a screen, kind of similar to any sort of text message you’ve seen. Then they would speak that message out loud where then the hearing person hears the message, speaks back to the operator. The operator would then hear that message and type it back to the deaf person. And it does sound like a slow process because it is very cumbersome, but back then that was the only way of communication. That was what we used. And so before that, we had to rely on our family, our close circles, our neighbors, even for communication to make calls for us, we had to rely on our circle.

Now that technology has improved, we are much more independent as deaf individuals using telecommunication. After years of the TTY, we have expanded into different ways of technology. We now have devices that can do automatic speech recognition, which is great for people who are hard of hearing. We also have video relay service, which is the use of signed language, which is great for deaf people who use sign language. So now technology has changed so much and I appreciate that you allowing me to share about that.

Oh, most definitely. I appreciate all the work that you all do. Definitely hear it. In our AT program, we partnered with InTRAC many, many times including the captions on the show that you’re listening to right now. So we really love it and I’m really excited to learn about this new service involving conference captioning. Tell me all about it.

Yeah, definitely. This is a new service. I guess it’s not really new. However, we did start this service in December of 2022, which actually is about two years ago upcoming December 2024.

We’ve noticed a popular demand for deaf individuals or hard of hearing people who are working out in different professional companies and tend to have a lot of conference calls, staff meetings, large conferences, and often communication is a second or last minute thought. Usually getting an interpreter and providing accessibility is often had at last minute.

So we call this RCC. This allows deaf individuals to use their own device. They could use a laptop, a tablet of sorts, and they’re able to read the RCC captions that was spoken over the conference bridge. So you’ll have the conference bridge in the center of your conference room, and then I’m able to see each person in the room. I can also then see the captions on my device, and then they will keep up with who is speaking. Of course, if we have interpreters, I would prefer to have interpreters. This is a great device for people who rely on captions or who prefer to see them. So again, we can get more in depth on that, but please.

Oh, definitely, and you did bring up having an interpreter is always the best, but I know sometimes meetings come up kind of quickly or there’s not time or I mean, interpreters are people too. Sometimes they might get sick or get caught in traffic and not be available, so having another resource is just really great. So Greg, I guess tell me how does this conference captioning work?

Yeah, of course. So almost if you could imagine, let’s say often I prefer to know two days in advance or one day in advance that we’re going to have a large meeting with my coworkers. Once we get to the conference room, before I get to the conference room, I would like to know the dates, who’s going to be there, and then I can work with Relay Indiana website. I can type in everything, all the information and fill out and then sign up. I will say we need a conference bridge phone. You can put in all the details there, and then you send that along the way. On the day of the meeting, when it’s time, you just show up with your own laptop or device. You place it where it’s visually accessible to you. You might have your staff in the room in a circle is most likely the most visual accessible.

Then I send a request on my device and they send me the link to join on the day of. I click on that link and it automatically connects us into a live captioner. Typically, we used to use a stenographer in court. Really often you’ve seen those stenographers. There are companies that provide that service in Colorado. However, we have partnered with captioners all over the USA. We work with captioners that provide those services. You get connected to that captioner. You’ll then see the captions start to be typed. You know that the captioner is connected. Once you’re connected, you’re ready to start the meeting. And the captioner will be able to hear from the bridge phone that’s in the center of the room and they can tell the different voices and they can type out their captions and then I as the consumer am able to see those captions.

So let’s say I wanted to say something, I can type in my text and send that to the captioner. The captioner sees that I’m typing and waits for the proper moment when the interpreter is ready or when the caption is ready, rather, they will then speak the captions that I’ve typed. So when you sign up and you fill out the request, you can pick either one-way captioning, which means I don’t have to say anything, I’m just going to be consuming the captions. Or you can check two-way, which means I’m going to be reading and I will also be responding via typing as well.

Nice. And that’s very new. I haven’t heard of the two-way communication with that. I mean, captions of course, hopefully most people are captioning their big meetings and their kind of big information, but I love that you give the way back, the communication back as well.

Yeah, and I agree. It’s definitely become, some people are thinking, “Hey, well what’s wrong with the automatic speech recognition captions we call ASR?” If you have a phone and you speak, and it sometimes can have those automatic captions. A few days ago I was actually using this and I was looking at the captions and I was thinking, these are saying words that don’t make sense, and often the meaning is lost, but it’s definitely not equivalent to what we provide with RCC. RCC captions, the captioners are listening for each individual word. Again, this is live human caption. How to spell specific words often is another part. ASR does not have the capability to know how to spell a lot of those words, so that’s another benefit.

And then also you can use RCC. Whenever I have a Zoom meeting, for example. If I have a Zoom call, I’m able to see everyone on my screen and let’s say all of them are hearing, but I can see each individual person on my screen, and then Zoom has their ASR captions as you know, and they’re okay. I can participate kind of with them, but I do request RCC and you have to have two separate devices when you are doing a Zoom call. So you will look at the Zoom and then you have your RCC device, and sometimes if you have one screen, you have to jump back and forth, which is why I recommend using the two devices so that you’re able to have those constant visual feeds. If people are talking over top of each other, I can take a look at the RCC and back to the Zoom. It’s really nice.

Oh, nice. Yeah, and I know a lot of places try to go with the kind of artificial intelligence and the kind of automatic, but yeah, it’s not the same. Does it work in a pinch? If there’s nothing else for maybe face-to-face, okay, it’s better than nothing, but it is certainly not comparable to actually having a real human being get in there and do everything. Greg, if I wanted to use RCC, I know you said that I need to fill out some information and try to give some notice. How do I go about doing that?

So as soon as you know when you’re going to be having the meeting and when you need the caption, the time and the date, the second that you know would go to www.relayindiana.com, which is our website, and then you would take a look and find RCC.

When you click on RCC, it will then pull up to make a request. You click and then you feed in all the information that you have so your name, maybe the date, the time, any information that it’s asking, you will feed. One thing is important is that you have to provide the conference bridge phone number so that the captioner is able to call into that phone, so you have to know the conference bridge phone number to be able to get them connected. It shouldn’t be too complicated.

Once you fill that out, you send in that request form online. You will receive an email which serves as a confirmation email of your request, and then you are able to see all of the information, and I would say often you get that email pretty quickly. It includes, again, the information that you fed. It also will include a link and that’s it. You just click the link and join on the day of.

Oh, that’s super easy. That’s super easy. Now let’s say I’m going to have a meeting and somebody in the meeting has requested an accommodation. Can I go in and request this or do I need to have the actual user go in and request? I just ask because I’m in a lot of meetings and occasionally folks do ask for an accommodation. Any tool I can give them, I always want to try to help. I just didn’t know if they need to be the one or if I can just set that up for them.

It can vary. I say as an agency of the state or if you work under the government, you might have a person who is responsible for facilitating all the accommodation requests or communication access requests on behalf of the consumers or staff that may be deaf hard of hearing. So typically that’s how those requests are made in those larger agencies. If there are other companies out there, the deaf person, if they’re typically their only one, they’ll make the requests themselves. Again, so it can vary depending on how your structure looks, your business structure. I want you to be aware that if this is no charge to that person who’s using this service, this is a no charge fee to the company as well. If they’re having a staff meeting, there is no charge at all for this fee.

Nice, nice. I was going to bring that up later, but you jumped right in and told me so I’ll definitely, definitely take that. Thank you, Greg. And yeah, most of the great services that you have I know are free to use and free to the consumers, and I’d definitely be doing a disservice to our listeners if I didn’t ask. What are some of the other services that InTRAC provides?

Yeah, of course. As I mentioned back in 1992 when Relay Indiana first started, again, we fully focused on type based telecommunication, pretty analog at the time. Typing back and forth is kind of antiquated. Another person, for example, if someone is able to speak for themselves but they can’t hear, we are still able to have direct third video communication and then they are able to look at the captions and see an interpreter at the same time. We have such a variety. There are several different accommodations, of course. That’s kind of an old approach. Ever since the last five to 10 years, we have been providing most often CapTel services, which is short for captioning and telephone, which is very popular for people who are hard of hearing. Often the people using CapTel don’t use sign language and they’re hard of hearing. CapTel is a way for hard of hearing people to pick up the phone and they can speak directly to the person that they’re calling and the person that they’re calling hears the hard of hearing person’s voice.

When that person speaks back, maybe the hard of hearing person can’t hear fully on the phone. They will then have a CapTel screen on their phone, which has captions, and that is a third party operator as well. The operator is just listening to the hearing person on the other line and typing the captions. The operator for CapTel does not speak at all, so you will never hear the operator on the phone. The hard of hearing user is the only voice that you hear. It’s the voices are direct communication, whereas the operator is just providing captions for the hard of hearing person. The captions are great for hard hearing people to reinforce that they heard what they thought they heard, and it’s been very common. I would say that that’s been around for about 10 years now.

Another service that we provide under InTRAC is equipment distribution programs, EDPs. So that is where we loan different devices for the use of relay technology. Back in the day, we would to you loan large TTY devices, of course, but again, that was five to 10 years ago so no one’s asking for TTYs really in this day and age. But now we are providing technology. Typically, we’re providing tablets. You can either choose an iPad or you can choose an Android tablet. So the consumer is able to choose which their preference is, and they can use that as a relay service device, and they’ll have several apps preloaded in there for different communication needs, specific to your needs as well. We have been doing those distribution programs for quite a while, so we’ll provide those tablets for those individuals.

A lot of people will ask, how do I get a tablet? How do I get technology? So again, you do have to apply. There is a form on the Relay Indiana website where you can go, again www.relayindiana.com, and you’re able to see equipment distribution programs. You will then see an application form. You can click and fill out the application form on the website. There are three tiers or criteria that you must meet in order to be able to receive a free loaner device. The first is that you need to be a resident of Indiana. The second is you need to be deaf, hard of hearing or have a speech disability, and the third is your annual income of, now we have it set at 74,000 or less. If you meet those three criteria, then you qualify for one of those devices, equipment, devices, whichever is your best fit.

Nice. And I know that’s a great program that a lot of folks have really used over the years, and kind of like Greg said, it’s not just for folks who are deaf and hard of hearing, but also folks who are maybe nonverbal or have difficulty speaking so it really can help with communication, with distance communication in just so many different ways. Greg, you’ve been at InTRAC for quite a while. Could you tell me a story that maybe sticks out with you about your services and how you were able to assist an individual or group of individuals? I know you’ve got a lot, so it’s hard to pick.

Yeah, I do have many stories. Yeah, let me think. I would say that I have one experience that comes to mind. We had a deaf blind individual, and for many years they were kind of out of communication, so they will use tactile communication or tactile sign language to talk. So that is when a deaf blind person puts their hands over my hands and is able to feel the signs. And so it’s actually, you’d be surprised at how adept they are at understanding Tactile Sign. It’s a really incredible language. Technology back then wasn’t as good as it is now. So as technology has been improving and changing, we now have access to TTY Braille. So there are Braille devices that can display the TTY captions.

One day I had reached out, we had a new Braille equipment that had become available, and I had reached out to a deaf blind individual asking, “Hey, are you interested?” They were pretty skilled with Braille, and so I asked if they had wanted to try it, and they had said, “Sure,” so we loaned this device. It’s a very expensive piece of equipment, of course, so we are loaning it for free anyways. We are able to provide education and training on how to use it. And that person immediately, their face was so lit up, they were so excited for all the calls that they were going to make, and it gave them access to this thing that they had not had access to for a while.

And so just being an activist, I guess maybe that’d be the right word, but an advocate for these people and being involved in the community as I have been my entire life, I look back at some of these experiences and I think after I have given this person this device, I see this person and the impact on their life and how much more involved they have become.

Oh, for sure. It’s so much more than just the device. It’s opening up that whole world of communication and just making things, I mean, accessible. It makes such a difference.

Exactly, exactly.

Such a difference, and we’re so glad that you do it. Greg, we’re currently in Indiana and InTRAC Indiana Relay is an amazing resource here. If someone was in another state in the US, are there similar programs around the country?

Yes, there are. As per the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, each state in the United States is required to provide relay services every single state as per the Americans with Disability Act, and that goes for all 50 states plus Washington, DC and Continental territories as well. They all are required to provide relay services. There are several companies that do provide relay services, and we actually do contract with them and they contract to provide on behalf.

So for example, here in Indiana we have a contract with T-Mobile, which used to be called Sprint. They have several companies like that. There was Sprint, Hamilton. MCI was another one. It’s kind of antiquated. AT&T. So, they would kind of do buyout. They were kind of bought out, and now there are two major companies that currently provide relay services, which are T-Mobile and Hamilton, and also CapTel services as well. Those are separate.

Unfortunately, T-Mobile had decided to take a step back from CapTel as a business, so we are now left with one which will continue to provide CapTel services. It looks like Hamilton’s been providing CapTel services all over. Now with TTY services and any of the other services, they are done through a bidding process where a company makes a proposal and then they decide if they are going to be a provider of relay. So here in Indiana, as I mentioned, you can choose Sprint on day one and day one it has been the same company that has been providing relay services Sprint.

Very cool. So if our listeners are outside of Indiana, there’s some program around you that should be able to help out in some of the ways. I’m going to tell you, they may not be quite as good as InTRAC, but at least they are probably there to at least help and give you some of those services that are available. Greg, if our listeners want to find out more and gain access to these resources, what is the best way for them to do that?

Certainly. So today, of course, technology being what it is, everything is digital and online. I could tell you again, www.relayindiana.com. There are other places that you can find resources as well, including Facebook. Relay Indiana, we even have a Facebook page where we are sharing our information. You’re also able to call us at any time as well or email us. We have phone and email responsiveness, so you are able to get in contact through us on the website.

Okay, excellent. We will put that down in the show notes so that our listeners can find out. Well, Greg, thank you so much for coming on today for telling us about all the amazing work that InTRAC does. Again, I know we’ve partnered with you many times and trying to help folks and get them what they need, but if you do get the chance and you’re here in Indiana, definitely, definitely reach out to Greg and his team. They’re great to work with and do really amazing things. So thanks again for coming on and telling us all about it.

Of course, I’m very glad to be here and I am honored and thankful for you to having me, and thank you so much for the opportunity to spread awareness about relay services in Indiana and the opportunity to get those out to more people. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

I really appreciate it too. Thank you so much, Greg. Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at Tech@Eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at RelayIndiana.com.

A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show is produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.