Deaf/Hard of Hearing

Interpreting

American Sign Language (ASL)/English interpreters facilitate communication between individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing and use sign language, and individuals who can hear. Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) coordinates sign language interpreting accommodations for Virginia Tech students during New Student Orientation, in their classes/labs, and for required academic activities. Interpreting accommodations for students registered with SSD are scheduled for classes and labs for the full semester. Interpreters typically work in a team of two, and take turns interpreting/monitoring the interpretation in order to provide optimal service. Interpreters usually stand near the speaker, and facilitate communication in real time.

Non-academic student requests, employee requests, or campus visitor requests for sign language interpreting services are coordinated by the department sponsoring the event. Requests for interpreting services should be made well in advance of the event.

C-Print™ Captioning

Some deaf and hard of hearing individuals do not use Sign Language, or prefer to communicate/receive classroom instruction in English. For those students, Virginia Tech may provide the C-Print™ Captioning accommodation. Please see the video below to learn how C-Print™ Captioning works.

Captioning accommodations are scheduled for the full semester. Classes which are not conducive to captioning may be served by volunteer note takers or other assistive technologies. Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) coordinates C-Print™ speech-to-text captioning for Virginia Tech students during New Student Orientation, in their classes/labs, and required academic activities.

Non-academic student requests, employee requests, or campus visitor requests for speech-to-text captioning accommodations are coordinated by the department sponsoring the event. Requests for captioning accommodations should be made well in advance of the event.

Note Taking

Note taking is another academic accommodation that might be required by deaf or hard of hearing students. Due to the difficulty of watching an interpreter or using speech-reading and writing lecture notes at the same time, a note taker may serve as a reasonable accommodation to capture information from the lecture in hard copy form. Services for Students with Disabilities coordinates these volunteer note-taking accommodations.

Assistive Listening Devices

Virginia Tech students who are hard of hearing may make use of an assistive listening device (ALD), which gives the user direct, amplified access to a speaker's voice while blocking out audio interference. Contact Services for Students with Disabilities well in advance to discuss ALD equipment needs. Many of the university's auditoriums are already set up for ALD use. Meeting with the audio-visual technician in each auditorium will determine to what frequency a personal ALD should be set. These auditoriums also have a limited number of ALDs to checkout for that specific class, meeting, or event. Arrangements can also be made to checkout an ALD from SSD for the entire semester.

University Colleges and Departments

The Services for Students with Disabilities office (SSD) provides sign language interpreting and C-PrintTM captioning services for Virginia Tech students in regularly scheduled classes and labs. It is the responsibility of the sponsoring department or college to arrange and fund sign language interpreting, C-Print™ or other transcription/captioning services for sponsored events or conferences in order to provide accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In addition, media used by university colleges and departments should contain captions or subtitles to make it accessible to students and other viewers. If you need assistance obtaining captioning for your online or other media, there is a Service Item at www.4help.vt.edu under Service Catalog -> Teaching & Learning Tools -> Accessible Technologies -> Captioning Services.

For further explanation, please contact Christa Miller at crhixson@vt.edu.

For further information regarding captioning, sign language interpreting requests, speech-to-text captioning requests, or assistive listening device requests by university colleges and departments, please contact the university's Office for Equity and Accessibility at 540-231-2010 or hrservicecenter@vt.edu. You may also obtain clarification and further information by contacting James Bell at 231-3788 or jabell@vt.edu.

Online Resources

The links below lead to external sites and will open in a new tab/window: