Resources: Employers

Student evaluation of remote services is critical to ensure effectiveness of services received.

Successful and effective services comes with cooperative contributions and efforts by all. Here are a few tips for students to encourage a positive experience using remote services.

One option to offering remote services is contracting with a professional and reputable agency. Selecting a reliable and experienced vendor can positively contribute to the quality and effectiveness of the use of remote services.

Speech-to-text services can be provided onsite or remotely. Onsite speech-to-text services refers to the service provider and consumer being in the same location.

Remote sign language interpreting services refers to circumstances where the interpreter and the consumer(s) are in different locations.

Use this tool to guide you through the process of providing remote access services. Answer each question with a “YES” (left) or a “NO” (right). At each answer point write your responses, ideas, action steps, or other notes on a to-do list.

Many different test-taking issues affect deaf students, but linked to all of these issues are the differing experiences with English, professionals who do not have a full understanding of the learning experiences or backgrounds of deaf individuals, and the lack of testing standards. This summary for professionals will look at ways test accessibility for deaf individuals can be addressed.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) work together to protect children and adults with disabilities from exclusion, discrimination, and unequal treatment in education, employment, and the community.

Effective communication affords deaf individuals the ability to share and/or receive information in a manner that is successful for them. Effective communication increases the opportunity for full and equal participation in any situation. Effective communication is fluid and allows all parties to receive and respond to information equally.

The characteristics of Deaf culture are formed out of many shared life experiences rooted in a visual world designed for communication ease.

The ability to communicate defines us as human beings and as a society. It forms a foundation for decision making and relationship building. Communicating with deaf individuals is an achievable goal, even when accommodations (e.g., interpreters) are not present. The tools available to us are considerable and limited only by our creativity and desire to communicate.

No discussion regarding hiring qualified interpreters is complete without an understanding of the definition of "qualified," as it pertains to the Americans With Disabilities Act, state regulation, and the concept of "effective communication."

Speech-to-text is one method of providing effective communication access under the law. However, it is more than simply providing technology; it requires the provision of effective services, and speech-to-text services are only as good as the skills of the service provider. When hiring a service provider, a number of qualification factors must be considered. It is imperative that institutions evaluate the quality of service to ensure that effective, real-time communication access is occurring.

The role of the interpreter appears to be very straightforward—to effectively facilitate communication between deaf individuals and those who are hearing. However, the complexities of the task, the varieties or types of visual interpreting, and the enormous range of qualifications brought by the interpreter make it anything but simple.

Today's technology affords deaf individuals access to the world like never before. Speech-to-text is one example of technology that brings access to individuals who are visual communicators.

Deaf students enrolling in colleges across the country are on the rise and securing access services can be difficult for institutions. Remote interpreting and speech-to-text services are viable options for institutions experiencing: shortages of qualified providers, specific interpreting or captioning needs for a course, or last-minute requests for urgent situations. Remote services can be a beneficial supplement or a mainstay way of providing access for students in a variety of situations. Institutions must have the knowledge necessary to evaluate requests, resources to arrange services, and the infrastructure to maintain quality and effective services.

This page provides individuals with tools to assess their institutional capacity to implement effective remote services.

Captioning, a textual representation of the audio, is an important accessibility tool for deaf people, as well as a benefit and learning tool for others. With so many avenues to obtain or create captioned media, ensuring that instructional materials are accessible is definitely achievable.

Improved access and advancements in technology have allowed deaf individuals who might not have previously considered a career in the healthcare field to now pursue this option. Nonetheless, barriers continue to exist, caused in part by the technical standards established by academia and training programs. Technical standards are a set of abilities and characteristics a person is required to possess to gain admission to an educational or training program.

In today's world, emergency preparedness is an important topic. Too often, deaf individuals do not have access to emergency alerts. Visual emergency alerting systems provide equal access and allow deaf people to evacuate safely during emergencies. Both the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act also mandate reasonable accommodations, which include visual fire alarms.

This two-part video explains the Americans With Disabilities Act and how it applies to postsecondary education for students who are deaf.

This brief summarizes the research related to effective communication between deaf and hearing individuals.

Late-deafened individuals experience a variety of challenges navigating the postsecondary environment due to a variety of internal and external factors. This document summarizes the research related to postsecondary outcomes for late-deafened individuals.