E41: Advancing Inclusive Communication: Haben Girma on Descriptive Transcripts

In this episode of the United in Accessibility podcast, Haben Girma discusses the significance of descriptive transcripts in enhancing digital accessibility for diverse audiences. She emphasizes that these transcripts provide richer context and detail beyond traditional captions and audio descriptions, fostering inclusive communication and bridging cultural gaps in media consumption.

Transcript

00:04 Speaker  

Welcome to the United in Accessibility podcast. Today, we are honored to welcome Haben Girma, a human rights lawyer and the first deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School. Haben's extraordinary journey has paved the way for greater disability justice worldwide. She’s been recognized by President Obama as a White House Champion of Change and serves as the World Health Organization’s Commissioner of Social Connection. Her advocacy, pioneering work in inclusion, and bestselling memoir, “Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law”, continue to drive meaningful progress. Tune in to learn how Haben challenges perceptions and ignites innovation such as descriptive transcripts on the United in Accessibility podcast.

00:57 Sam Evans  

Hi. This is Sam Evans. I'm the Certification Director at the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. Thank you for joining us today for our United in Accessibility podcast. Today, I'm so pleased to be able to introduce and share some time with Haben Girma, who many of you may already know from advocacy work around the world and from her work in accessibility and inclusion. I myself have a copy of Haben's book. Haben is most widely known, likely outside of her legal expertise, as the first deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School. But I'm going to let Haben introduce herself and talk about what's been the biggest parts of her professional career, and then we'll move into talking about descriptive transcripts.

02:00 Haben Girma  

Thanks, Sam. Hi everyone, this is Haben speaking. I am from California, and growing up, I faced numerous barriers as a deafblind person in a world mostly designed for people who can see and hear, the schools, the libraries, the ice cream shops, and I wanted tools to help create access, so I gained a legal education. Learned how to use the laws to increase accessibility. Another aspect of that is education, teaching people about designing accessible tools spaces and also the social elements of how we can use language and stories to increase accessibility for disabled people. So, I'm looking forward to sharing some of that with you. Sam, how do you want to start?

03:06 Sam Evans  

So, Haben, could you take a moment just to give a first-person explanation for people who may not understand what deafblindness is and how you choose to communicate in the tools that you use, so that we can plug those introductions and technology pieces after we talk about the human factor.

03:34 Haben Girma  

Deafblindness is a spectrum. So many different communication tools and languages used by the deafblind community. The dominant one in the US is American Sign Language. There's also Protactile. I am using a braille computer paired with a keyboard, and as Sam speaks, we have someone typing what Sam's saying. I'm reading the words in braille and then responding by voice. You might notice a delay between when Sam speaks and when I respond, and that's because the communication is coming through. A big part of accessibility is patience, making time for different kinds of voices, typing voices, singing voices, voices with stutters. We need to make sure we're not rushing and instead, hold time for all different kinds of voices. Back to you Sam.

04:42 Sam Evans  

So, I think that people may often think about digital accessibility as only pursuing the needs of considerations for screen readers as their default checkpoint. And I think as we work with so many of our colleagues and peers and people in our communities, learning to use those multiple voices in multiple modes, both for communicating out but also for interactive. Learning that people who are deafblind have a variety of modes and preferences. So, I regularly see corrections in accessibility technical community is to say, hey, I don't use a screen reader, or I use protactile. And so, I think learning a little bit about multiple modes of communication is important and how people prefer to communicate. So, I thank you for making time to give a brief introduction, but also for the reminder that deafblindness is a spectrum, and each person has a different experience. So again, pulling us back to focusing on the person that we're engaging with and if there's anything else that you think our readers and our listeners need to know about your use of a refreshable braille display, maybe what are some assumptions people might make about people who are deafblind that you often encounter as people approach you.

06:10 Haben Girma  

So many people assume that deafblind people don't use computers, don't use the Internet, and we get a lot of situations where a website will go through accessibility changes and the deafblind community is ignored. A common CAPTCHA accessibility feature is to have an audio option, all right, if you can't see the visual puzzle what if you have as an accessibility feature audio for people to listen in and type what they hear? And that sends the message that if you can't see or can't hear, then you're a robot. There absolutely are ways to have security checks that are accessible to deafblind people, in addition to others with disabilities. So, it's really important to remind folks in accessibility, deafblind people are also using screen readers, also using websites and apps, and we need to design solutions that include us.

07:28 Sam Evans  

So, one of the ways that we are going to talk about today is for that inclusive communications options are descriptive transcripts, and so I want to position our audience that's reading and/or listening along with us today, to think about when we watch or hear or read information. How much context is needed to really take in the full experience, and so that context is needed beyond just a translation of the spoken words themselves in order with grammar and punctuation, which is important, but the context of what's happening in a descriptive transcript can really bridge a lot of gaps to relay an equitable access point. And so, is that a fair place to start, Haben?

08:23 Haben Girma  

I would love to start with descriptive transcripts. So, these are actually still quite rare. Most videos and movies do not have descriptive transcripts, but that's changing. More and more of them are getting descriptive transcripts. So, audio descriptions are key visual details narrated by voice, so blind audiences can know what's happening visually in the video captions are text on screen of the audio coming from the video, descriptive transcripts combine both of those. However, they're not limited by time. The way audio description is limited, or captions are limited. So, when writing descriptive transcripts, there's the opportunity to add in even more context, even more descriptions, whereas with audio descriptions, you're trying to cram in descriptions into short pauses, which means you end up leaving out a lot of descriptions. So, when I read descriptive transcripts, it's almost like reading a novel or a screenplay. The more visual details you can add in, the more people can feel the scene and feel like they're stepping in to the world being created by the movie. So, I'm excited for more people to start making descriptive transcripts. Yes, this should be for movies, but also, if you're posting short educational videos to social media or your websites, add descriptive transcripts, so that deafblind people can access what's in the video. It's also helpful for anyone who processes information best through text rather than visual or audio format. Then there are also situations where people have limited access to downloading videos and being able to just read the transcript can help those if they don't have the bandwidth to download the video. Back to you Sam.

10:55 Sam Evans  

Thanks, Haben. I think one of my first introductions to audio description helped me understand the process. And if anyone has ever submitted a video for postproduction, audio description, artist and specialist will pause the video, the time-motion content and speak to what's being displayed visually. But there's only so much time available without interrupting the flow of the time-motion video. So, if you've ever listened to or watched a video that has audio descriptions, you will have a human voice come in to describe things in an educational setting or training's really important to relay what's being shown. Especially if it is a strong storytelling element or has historical or cultural references that helps the observer, the learner, the student or the observer, understand how and why that visual selection has been included. So that context, Haben talked about different modes of people who prefer or learn better with text-based information versus visual or instead of hearing. But we also, as with most disability inclusion practices, when we deliver an accessible, disability focused product, we help raise levels for other people as well, and that can include other modes of learning, and especially for people who don't live and work in our cultural timeframe and our cultural practices.

12:38 Haben Girma  

I also want to add that I have been posting descriptive transcripts with my videos, and I've heard from many blind individuals, hearing blind individuals, that they've also benefited from the descriptive transcript because there's no constraint on time- so there's the ability to add in more information that otherwise would get missed, if you're just limiting yourself to pauses within the dialog, and a lot of the very short social media videos don't even have pauses.

13:18 Sam Evans  

So descriptive transcripts really have the opportunity to, especially if you're creating content or it's your responsibility to deliver the content via video as your mode, to really ensure that everything you intended your viewer, your watcher, your reader, your observer, your learner, everything you intended for them to take in, you could still do it in a curated format. You don't need to go beyond what's intended, but you can actually deliver a robust storytelling version in a descriptive transcript without cutting corners.

13:56 Haben Girma  

We also want the transcript to reflect the style and tone of the video. So, if the video is humorous, the transcript should not be dull and boring. So, when you're describing what's happening on screen, make sure the tone you're using in the writing matches the tone in the video. And sometimes it's also helpful, especially for deaf and deafblind audiences who are not hearing the tone in the video when someone's speaking and maybe they're saying something sarcastically, having tone tags in the transcript helps people gain access to that information to know. Okay, that was said sarcastically.

14:45 Sam Evans  

And Haben I think that's a really great point, because we have the capacity to actually work towards, I know we talk about equitable access a lot in accessibility, but with descriptive transcripts, we have the opportunity to actually deliver equitable information, was it said in humor? Was the speaker angry? Was it forceful? Were they distressed? So, if we think about the ways that we would hope to give direction for an artistic endeavor, we have the opportunity to really deliver information in the manner it was intended to be taken in. Have you encountered when you have read a descriptive transcript, Haben one that was not descriptive before, and you get a totally different takeaway or the emphasis that was intended becomes more apparent to you?

15:44 Haben Girma  

There have been some situations where I read the transcript and I'm still baffled by what's going on, probably because tone tags or context was missing. Sometimes there is internet irony that I miss, because the vast majority of videos and memes are not accessible in the first place. 

16:11 Sam Evans  

Haben, how much of that do you think we have the ability to bridge cultural gaps along with accessibility, or the pure purpose of making things equitable? But do you think there's far more that can be gained and shared with our audiences with descriptive transcripts, just on the context alone?

16:32 Haben Girma  

When making descriptive transcripts, we have that freedom to be bridge builders in terms of culture. So, if something in the video is happily relying on references to culture that some people might not understand, we could add in that context, add in an explanation that would help guide readers. So, like for a novel, you might add in the backstory, add in a preface or intro that'll help people get context. Sometimes, if I am doing a video that's about an aspect of deafblind culture that most sighted hearing people won't understand, I will have a sentence or two explaining what is Protactile or what does HKNC stands for, so that they could also be included. Accommodation goes both ways. It's not just accommodating disabled people; it's also accommodating nondisabled people. 

17:43 Sam Evans  

I think that's a really great point Haben, because we have so much to do in awareness and education building as well. So, to that point, Haben, would you like to take a moment to display to explain the two terms that you just listed, Protactile and HKNC?

17:59 Haben Girma  

Well, Pro-tactile is a language and movement started by the deafblind community. There are hundreds of sign languages around the world, but most of them are visual, and that puts deafblind people at a disadvantage. So deafblind pioneers started making a new language that centers touch, so it's like a cousin of American Sign Language, but centers touch and communication, so that deafblind people are not at a disadvantage. And then the other one I mentioned, HKNC is the acronym for Helen Keller National Center. It's the primary deafblind education center in the United States, and there have been a lot of conversations about that recently within the deafblind community, because HKNC hired a new director who sighted and hearing. And in the history of the agency, there has never been a director who was deafblind, and a lot of deafblind people are frustrated about that. How do we have education without representation? The deaf community had the “Deaf President Now” movement at Gallaudet University, and that's what's happening now for the deafblind community.

19:40 Speaker  

With the adoption of WCAG 2.1 in many countries, there is an increased demand for web developers, designers and other professionals with knowledge of web accessibility standards and guidelines. With this growth comes the need for an objectively verified level of expertise. The Web Accessibility Specialist exam will provide individuals and employers with the ability to assess web accessibility competence, complete the WAS and CPACC exam to earn the special designation of Certified Professional in Web Accessibility.

20:15 Sam Evans  

So Haben, I have had the very good luck to learn through occupational therapists who work with Protactile and have had just the absolute pleasure to have deafblind people come and teach us non deafblind, non-blind and I am Deaf, Hard of Hearing, but I've had the really good grace to have people come and explain, show and help us understand the interactive elements with Protactile. And I think if people haven't had that opportunity to learn yet, I want to make sure that we share some resources with the podcast where people can start to learn a bit more, to understand how Protactile differs from sign language, and to begin learning a bit more. I am surprised to learn that the HKNC did not hire a deafblind, or at least a deaf or a blind person for their leadership. That's surprising.

21:14 Haben Girma  

Yes, it's very surprising. And there has been a call for representation throughout the disability community, a big tenant of disability justice is "Nothing about us without us." Allies are really critical. We want non-disabled allies. There is a difference, though, between helping and controlling, and if disabled people are kept out of leadership roles, then that's not true accessibility. So, we need to make space for allies and space for disabled people too.

22:04 Sam Evans  

Has there been any movement from the board or the direction to seek out pathways into that leadership track that you're aware of? You may not know.

22:18 Haben Girma  

There is a leadership program, but it's not focused on more higher-level leadership, like management leadership, the leadership program is more focused on becoming an instructor, trainer, and those are important roles too. But we want to also be able to have an executive director who is deafblind. And there's a petition going around, and deafblind people are saying, many of us are highly talented, and there's no excuse for not having a deafblind person as the executive director.

23:03 Sam Evans  

I think a lot of us would say the "Nothing about us" concept really is still foreign to a lot of organizations, and I look forward to seeing more growth, more disability led organizations where there are people in leadership beyond staff levels, but I look for that too in nonprofit organizations, for boards and strategic councils to be inclusive of people with disabilities across a variety of types of disabilities. I know that we are seeing more progress made, but I'm not sure you can speak to us as we're trying to help raise awareness and education. What are the sorts of things that employers should consider making a workplace most accessible for somebody who's deafblind? Is it, again, they'll ask the individual what their needs are and meet those accommodation needs, but if an employer has never considered, say they have a good path forward. They use captioned videos, and they talk about digital accessibility. What kind of tips would you say? Here are some things to consider round out your technical digital accessibility plan to be inclusive for prospects and customers who are deafblind.

24:23 Haben Girma  

Great question. There is so much diversity within the deafblind community that it's really important to ask, "What can we do to make this workplace more accessible?" Listen to the responses and start making the changes that would make the workplace more accessible. There are guidelines and programs out there that are more general, not for a specific disability, but for a variety of different disabilities, for increasing accessibility. Ask JAN is one resource, I believe you're working on another resource, which I think is still in its pilot stage, maybe, but those are some of the tools that organizations can start with. But after working on that, we should be asking all new hires what we can do to make the workplace more accessible. It would be great, if not questions not just directed at disabled people, but also asking nondisabled people what we can do to make the workplace more accessible.

25:39 Sam Evans  

But I want to come back to something you said when we started talking that really struck me as a very simple ask, and that was to make time to listen and to listen to different voices. I think that simply ask in how we communicate, in making time and space for different voices, is really poignant and really important, and I think maybe a process a lot of people haven't considered, unless they're working with people with a lot of different types of voices and processes. Have you encountered people that have "aha moments", where you notice the change in the approach, where the cantor or the timing becomes not to center their comfort, but for them to become more comfortable and more natural in engaging with different voices.

26:33 Haben Girma  

I have witnessed a lot of those "aha moments", and it's really rewarding to notice people start making these changes, start making their videos more accessible, start having descriptive transcripts, slowing down, making time for different kinds of voices, whether someone is stuttering or they're typing Instead of voicing, time for sign language interpretation so those changes are happening, and it's really rewarding when that does happen.

27:09 Sam Evans  

So, we want people to think if people are working in technical digital accessibility, they may be familiar in document formats of looking at the difference between alt text or an image description and long form description. So, I'm going to take us back to a technical approach to things about how we story tell in digital communications, if people are used to long form descriptions for documents or in books and print materials for our descriptive transcripts. If we come back to that, how much artistic license would you expect. Sill to be concise but clear enough to where there's no question that they understand that the man's clothes and the video are reflective of his religious attire that are common in his culture, or is it contextual and it really depends on the intention of the content?

28:09 Haben Girma  

You know, our community is so diverse and has a lot of hot debates about how much description to add, some people want more, some people want less. And I think having this tension is actually good. We're having this kind of tension helps continue fine tuning and improving the accessibility we do receive. So, it's going to vary based on a person's preferences and I personally prefer more description to less description. Other people might prefer less, but that's okay. We don't need to agree on everything. It's good to have a healthy amount of debate in the accessibility community.

29:04 Sam Evans  

And for those people who are sighted, who are writing or helping to contribute to descriptive transcripts or audio descriptions, and this tension that you're talking about is this kind of what I wanted to get towards is, how do we balance what is delivered visually that has an impact on things, versus centering sight?

29:27 Haben Girma  

What do you mean by centering sight? 

29:30 Sam Evans  

I often hear and read commentary that visual descriptions of people's appearances, if it's relative to the story, I understand its importance, but that oftentimes giving visual descriptions may be centering sight as a sense that is the standard, versus just giving context that doesn't have visual descriptions. And so, I read it enough to where I often think about is the description that's happening like I didn't say that "I'm a white woman with gray hair and a blue shirt", because it's not relative to our discussion. But if we're describing content in a video or time motion or an image, the relevant is the reason the image was chosen, or the reason the video was selected. Describing that is the core versus centering what the description is of just someone who's not using sight or doesn't have bandwidth, so not centering sight, but quality of content.

30:33 Haben Girma  

I think I understand. So, for example, colors. A lot of people say we don't really care about the color of the shirt or the color of the shoes, and overly focusing on colors and descriptions can be sight centric. On the other hand, sometimes colors matter and so, for example, if it is a fashion video, you definitely want to include the colors. If the colors symbolize political affiliation or a school, or if there are colors that have that extra meaning, then they should be mentioned, because that's information sighted people are getting, and that's part of the story. I also think the site centric comments are also referring to the fact that sometimes descriptions are not multi-sensory, and the hope of a lot of videos or really good novels is to bring you right into the scene. And for a blind person, just getting a bunch of visual descriptions is not going to pull us into the scene. But combine those visual descriptions with aromatic descriptions, descriptions of tastes, descriptions of textures, make it as multi-sensory as you can. And when looking at a video as a sighted person, you're sometimes able to see textures, or, you know, if there are things that, or if you are the person who was there, and you can add those descriptions because you are the artist who created the video, as well as describing the video, or helping someone describe the video, then you can add in those multi-sensory descriptions. So, make those descriptions as multi-sensory as possible, so it's not just sight centric. I think that's really brilliant advice, because you talked about being immersed in the scene and kind of traveling into the experience, if you were reading a novel. I think if I were watching a video from say, for instance, Anthony Bourdain, who traveled to a lot of places around the world to talk about his experiences in food. And I know you like to travel, and you enjoy a lot of really sampling good eats around the world. Anthony Bourdain was always very descriptive about the experience he was in when he visited places, he would tell you about the smells and the textures and the sounds. And that descriptive approach is very artistic, but I think that we can do the same for our work in the professional world as well as in our social interactions and in education. Yeah. So, to keep it very, very simple, if you were describing a person in a video, and you could just describe they're wearing a white scarf, or you could say they're wearing a very fluffy, warm scarf, or they're wearing what looks like a wool scarf. So those kind of texture details, to me, as a blind person, would be more interesting than learning that the scarf is white.

34:25 Sam Evans  

So I'm going to challenge everybody who's listening now or reading to think about how we can be more descriptive in our transcripts, to take advantage of that leeway we have as communicators to produce descriptive transcripts, and you can take your cart captions, which will give you high quality grammar, spoken names, all of those things that we know make for good information, and you can edit those and add in your descriptions to give context and relevance and anything that might be in, as Haben said, those multi-sensory concepts. Take a practice run and do some AB testing. Here is our traditional text, only spoken word, perhaps sounds transcript, and here's a descriptive transcript. Do you think that would be a fun way for people to learn about not just for people who are blind, deaf or deafblind or other disabilities or other cultures, maybe to get some teammate or close customer responses to the difference in the transcript experience.

35:35 Haben Girma  

One really great way to improve your skills in this area is to read existing descriptive transcripts and learn how different people are doing this. Netflix has descriptive transcripts for "Crip Camp", the really great film about the disability rights movement. Another one is "All the Light We Cannot See". That one has a descriptive transcript as well. The videos I post include descriptive transcripts. A deafblind friend of mine posts under the handle "Blindish Latina", and she also does descriptive transcripts. That's Catarina Rivera, she also does descriptive transcripts for her videos. So, check out all these existing descriptive transcripts, and that'll help you build up those skills.

36:37 Sam Evans  

Caterina is wonderful. We had the chance to meet with her, and I really enjoy learning from her on a regular basis. I have watched and read the descriptive transcript for "Crip Camp", because I have watched "Crip Camp" since it came out several years ago. So, I'm going to make a note, and we'll make sure we list those Haben in our transcript for today from our discussion. You talked a little bit. I'm going to jump for just a moment. You talked about our work that we're doing here at IAAP and G3ict, we are working on a disability, inclusion, accessibility set of criteria and its ways that goes a step beyond a maturity model and Haben, thank you so much for the video you produced for us about that, but we are working to help organizations learn how to not just look at a maturity model scale, but what are some real criteria and actionable tasks that we can take on to improve our accessibility, and all of that's disability led. So, we're looking forward to moving forward with that, and it's been really refreshing Haben. I had the chance to work with another organization about multiple disability inclusion for event planning, so that was fun for me, and we'll look forward to as we get that closer to ready to share out publicly, we'll make sure to invite you back to take a spin through and get your feedback on that.

38:08 Haben Girma  

Sounds good.

38:12 Sam Evans  

So, I also want to say

38:13 Haben Girma  

I think it's been a really great conversation, especially helping people understand all the different layers that are within descriptive transcript. It is tricky. It's a skill. It's an art to take a video, take the audio descriptions, the captions, and create a descriptive transcript. 

38:35 Sam Evans  

But I think that's the magic of people who work in disability, inclusion and accessibility, is to combine skills and craft to deliver something to raise an equitable access for everyone. So, I think that's a really interesting part of going beyond the technical and making sure we're meeting the humans and the people, where they are to deliver the best we can to ensure that everyone has access to live, learn, work and play in their community of choice.

39:05 Haben Girma  

Agreed, this can touch on every single community, from the sports and gaming community to the legal community. Everybody's using videos these days, and we need to make sure people have access to those videos.

39:23 Sam Evans  

So, there's your challenge. Folks, are you up to the challenge? We're going to have some great examples for you to read, review, watch and learn from. Haben, it's such a treat, and it's always a pleasure to get a chance to talk with you. It's a treat to do it live. We appreciate you coming to join us today. So much. Thank you very much Haben.

39:47 Haben Girma  

You're very, very welcome. I know you're also a big fan of sweet treats, and I hope you're able to make those Portuguese custard tarts with your neighbor. 

39:59 Sam Evans  

I am always enjoying Haben’s videos and images from her travels. So, I have a challenge with a neighbor to bake a Brazilian custard tart. So, I'll report back, and hopefully they'll be delicious.

40:15 Haben Girma  

I'm sure they will. If they're not the first time, you could keep practicing until you're happy with both. That's part of the fun of baking.

40:25 Sam Evans  

So, everyone, thanks for making time to join us today on the IAAP podcast, United in Accessibility. Thank you, Haben Girma, for making time to talk with us, to share your knowledge and advice and guidance on starting to produce and deliver descriptive transcripts as part of our accessibility charge, our mission and our purpose in so much of our work. Thank you so much Haben.

40:51 Haben Girma  

You're very welcome. Bye, everyone.

40:56 Speaker  

The International Association of Accessibility Professionals membership consists of individuals and organizations representing various industries, including the private sector, government, nonprofits and educational institutions. Membership benefits include products and services that support global systemic change around the digital and built environment. United in Accessibility, join IAAP and become a part of the global accessibility movement.
 
 
Links mentioned:

CripCamp https://www.netflix.com/title/81001496 
 All The Light We Cannot See https://www.netflix.com/title/81083008 
 CatarinaRivera.com https://www.catarinarivera.com/ 
 HabenGirma.com https://habengirma.com/

IAAP Disability Inclusion & Accessibility Program https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/s/di-ac