Service in a nonlegal setting
Deanna P. Baker, RMR
Flagstaff, Ariz.
Broadcast captioner Deanna P. Baker, RMR, worked with the World Institute on Disabilities, which is a leading force in 2016’s groundbreaking Conference Accessibility Initiative. For this effort, WID, in partnership with JPMorgan Chase & Co., strives to make community development and policy conferences more accessible to, and inclusive of, people with disabilities. At all 11 conferences, Baker and WID employees have introduced captioning remotely using 1Fuzion, a new technology by 1CapApp, that mimics the look of an encoder but is strictly Web based and can easily be configured in many different ways by the conference coordinator.
Before each of these conferences, Baker and WID would teleconference in the AV teams and conference coordinators to test out the technology to ensure everyone had a good grasp of how everything would work. At every conference, WID employees were onsite answering questions and receiving words of appreciation. Many expressed amazement that the captions were created by a “real” human being! Some participants took WID’s information and passed it along to other conferences they attend and requested captioning be made available there. Due to Baker’s collaboration with WID, thousands of people experienced open captioning for the first time this past year.
