School Committee wants to close-caption its meetings
The School Committee hopes to soon be closed-captioned for the hearing impaired — and anyone else who has a hard time keeping up with conversations during its Zoom meetings.
“I don’t think it’s an if, it’s a must,” School Committee Chair Laura Often said.
Often has been reviewing various companies that offer the service and will be testing 3Play Media, which appears to be easy on use and price but would require that everyone on the Zoom call use proper microphones and headsets.
“I’m not sure what the district-wide need is for Zooming at home,” Often said. “But if a teacher needed it, they could 100 percent use it.”
Often also suggested working with the Commission on Disabilities to see if there’s a way to get closed captioning on live GCTV broadcasts. The committee can enable captioning on videos posted to YouTube.
School Committee member Rahul Rathi had concerns about how an automatic system might interpret accents.
“I’m not sure how well it would do with an Indian accent,” he said.
