by Henry Kisor
This time I awakened from a sound sleep with an uncomfortable sensation in my posterior, as if I were perching on a fence post. I looked up and saw that light was spilling from the corridor into the roomette. Then I raised myself on my elbows and looked around. A dark shape was leaning into the roomette, its hand underneath the blankets. I was being groped.
With an angry cry I sprang into a sitting position and unleashed a haymaker that missed its target by yards and catapulted me into the opposite wall. I scrambled out into the corridor to give chase to the groper, fast disappearing into the next car, but realized I was in my underwear, and halted. After checking to see that my wallet and belongings were intact, I gave up the idea of reporting the incident to the conductor. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the culprit and would never have been able to identify him.
It is not only the elevating of public consciousness about the hearingimpaired that has freed us from centuries of isolation. For many of us the microchip is probably the greatest aid to communication the twentieth century has yet provided. It has made possible hearing aids of sophistication, miniaturization, and power unheard of in the days when I toted that heavy Bakelite brick and its batteries in a harness. It has led to medical advances such as cochlear implants, tiny devices that when surgically placed within the inner ear help certain hearing-impaired patients to overcome the greatest frustrations of soundlessness.
The microchip has also made possible inexpensive, small, noiseless, durable, and easily obtainable replacements for the huge, clattering old teletype machines that a generation ago first allowed deaf people to “talk” with one another on the telephone. Today’s TDD—short for “Telecommunications Device for the Deaf”—looks like a lightweight portable typewriter with a keyboard and two rubber cups into which a telephone handset is inserted. It’s simply a computerized version of the teletype, its eight-inch-wide rollpaper printer replaced by an electronic digital readout that displays a single glowing line of text. (Some TDDs can also print out text on narrow cashregister paper.)
All deaf residents of Illinois are now entitled to a free TDD, thanks to a five-cent-a-month charge applied to all phone bills in the state. Most government offices, libraries, and other public institutions also have TDDs. Partly as an exercise in corporate noblesse oblige and partly to win the business of deaf people, a growing number of private firms are installing the machines and publicizing their phone numbers.
Why not? A TDD does not tie up a phone line. The device sits unobtrusively next to the phone until it’s needed. It’s easy to tell when a call from a TDD is coming in; the caller presses its space bar repeatedly, sending distinctive beeps. And, though technophobes may fret, little training is required to operate the machine; one simply turns it on, places the telephone handset into the rubber cups, and taps away on the keyboard.
In the early 1980s, when the telephone companies first began renting TDDs to the deaf for a low monthly charge and to businesses and institutions for a bit more, I persuaded the Sun-Times to try an inexpensive threemonth experiment: renting a TDD for me at the office while I obtained another for home. At the very least I’d be able to call home and talk with my family, just as my co-workers did. Perhaps, if the TDD became widely used, it would be a boon to me in other ways as well.
And it was. Before long I bought a lightweight, book-sized, batteryoperated portable TDD that I could take on the road, calling from phone booths and hotel rooms to my home or even to the paper, where I’d arrange for another editor to keep the office TDD by her desk in case I should call. The Sun-Times pronounced the experiment successful and kept the TDD.
I’ve used TDDs to make airline and hotel reservations and to call public libraries to obtain information about authors. Every other week I use one to touch base with my parents in Pennsylvania; they bought a $200 TDD just to communicate with their deaf son eight hundred miles away. Being able to speak with each other without resorting to the aid of a third party is a mutual comfort. And now my son Colin has my old portable TDD with him at college, and calls home occasionally for a father-son shmooze.
As for reaching people who might not deal with enough deaf customers to warrant owning or renting a TDD—dentists and doctors as well as pizza parlors come to mind—deaf communities in many cities have organized “relay stations” of hearing volunteers, many of them physically handicapped and housebound. These volunteers take TDD calls from the deaf and relay them by voice to their destinations, then call the TDD users back with the responses. In 1990 Illinois put into operation a professional relay system with two 800 numbers, one for TDDs and one for voice, so that no callbacks are needed. Rather, the relay operators “translate” simultaneously between the two parties, and the better operators are so skilled that their service as go-betweens are virtually unobtrusive.
In Illinois at this writing, the relay service will handle only intrastate calls, not long-distance ones. I’ve begun to use the state relay service to call local writers and ask them to review books for the Sun-Times, but must rely on my assistant for out-of-state calls. Within a few years, however, thanks to federal legislation recently enacted, a network of relay systems will crisscross the United States. And I will be able to speak directly not only with authors and reviewers all over the United States but also editors and publicity directors in New York City, the capital of the publishing profession. In some ways, I’ll be able to “work the phones” just like any hearing journalist.
TDDs indeed have opened a wide door on the closed world of the deaf, helping end a great deal of its isolation. But for the time being, TDDs are still specialized devices for handicapped users. They’re not the kind of appliance one finds in every home or business; their use is still limited to a tiny portion of the American population. And for technical reasons, due to their teletypewriter heritage, they are slow. It’s easy for a fast typist to outrun a TDD’s transmission rate; when that happens, the message becomes garbled and unreadable.
The personal computer has revolutionized not only my professional but my personal life as well. When I bought that Osborne 1 in 1982, it was intended strictly as a writing machine. But before long I added to my system a modem, a device that allows two computers to exchange information over the phone. It allowed me to transmit articles and columns written at home on the Osborne to the big mainframe computer at the Sun-Times so that I would not have to retype them at the office.
But there are other uses for a modem. Soon I discovered that I could use it to communicate with other people—hearing people. The vehicle is the electronic bulletin board system—“BBS,” for short. These are personal computers, owned by hobbyists, that employ modems and special software to turn themselves into glorified answering machines for other computers. One can call a BBS with one’s own computer and modem, and then type in a password in order to read messages, public and private, other people have left on the system. The best analogue for a BBS is a kind of electronic rural general store. People drop in from all over to set a spell, picking up gossip with their video screens and passing on their own chitchat with their keyboards. They can even “talk” with the proprietor of the system, taking turns typing away at their keyboards, their sentences following one another on-screen.
It wasn’t long before I figured out that all one needed to “keyboardtalk” with another computer user was ordinary modem software on the computers at both ends of the phone line. At prearranged times I could call a fellow computer user and “chat,” with him. This is very much like using a TDD, but without the technical problems. Computers are much faster than TDDs; even the fastest typist can’t outrun a computer’s transmission rate. And the large screen of the computer is much more efficient than the TDD’s single-line display.
Most important, the personal computer and modem are universal appliances, not special devices associated with a particular handicap, as TDDs are for the deaf. For the first time, they enabled me to “talk” on the phone with the hearing world at large—with fellow members of my own culture. T
o me they were truly an instrument of liberation.
Before long I discovered that these computer conversations need not be expensive long-distance calls, either. They can be conducted through organizations called videotex services that maintain phone connections in cities everywhere. These services are by day large computer database services for business and industry, and by night information exchanges for computer hobbyists. For an hourly charge (twelve to fifteen dollars is typical) plus the cost of a local call, personal computer users can call up a videotex service, send “electronic mail” to other subscribers around the country, and pick up their own. They can also make use of a feature called “Chat,” in which hundreds of computer users around the country and in foreign lands can “talk” simultaneously with their keyboards. The conversation can be a giant free-for-all like a citizens band radio colloquy, or a private one-to-one conversation, or a “conference call” limited to two, three, or more persons.
For me, computer-chatting was a staggering revolution in communications. For the first time I could participate in group talks without worrying about whether people could understand my speech, whether they would listen to what I had to say rather than how I said it, and whether I could follow the bouncing ball of conversation among a large number of people.
Wholeheartedly I plunged into it, spending hours every evening in electronic chats with people all over the country. Debby became a computer widow, my children orphans. I was oblivious to their loneliness. For I was meeting many, many fascinating people. An emergency-room physician in Memphis shared my love for Gerard Manley Hopkins’ verse. A young novelist in Cleveland related his agonizing experiences trying to break into print. A Chicago psychologist told of her work with convicts. A Texas housewife confided the secrets of setting up a successful homebased word-processing business. A sheriff’s policeman in Georgia told fascinating stories about law enforcement among the deaf. It was like a giant electronic town meeting, with people from all walks of life plunging into swirling currents of conversation. If one tired of public chatter, one could enter a few commands to talk privately with one or two others. I reveled in it.
After the first blush of novelty wore off, drawbacks appeared. Videotex chatting tends to attract unpleasant insects—juveniles and emotionally deprived adults eager for sexual conversations (or “interactive porn”) as well as poseurs pretending to be wealthy and accomplished people. Yet most computer-chatters are perfectly normal people who take occasional pleasure in this form of communication. Some regular users suffer from physical defects that keep them housebound and have few other ways to interact with fellow humans. But persistent sociopaths abound on-line, and it is sometimes difficult to shake them off.
And when all is said and done, computer communication is really no substitute for regularly interacting in the flesh with other human beings— and I’m no hermit.
Moreover, that hourly charge can easily run up enormous bills, especially if one plunges into computer-chatting with any regularity. After receiving several staggering invoices, I looked for a cheaper way to connect with my computer chums, especially those around the Chicago area. The answer was to set up an electronic bulletin board of my own. Anyone with a personal computer and a modem could phone my system and leave a message or “beep” me for a live keyboard chat. When I was at home, the ringing modem would flash a lamp to alert me to a call.
By late 1984 I’d bought another computer, a more powerful IBM-compatible, for my syndicated column on personal computers, and the Osborne was lying largely unused. Why not, I thought, use the Osborne for a BBS with public-domain bulletin-board software free for the taking? But I was no programmer; I knew how to use word-processing programs and that was all. One needed to be a sophisticated hobbyist to set up a bulletin board. Help eventually came from a friend who operated a BBS on his Osborne as a hobby. His spouse was hearing impaired, so he had a natural interest in helping deaf people. Swiftly he customized his software for my use, and a new avenue of communication lay open for me.
Today, with a lightweight laptop computer, I can “phone home” to the BBS, pick up my messages, and talk with my family from the office or from hotel rooms when I’m on the road. When I’m at the office, I load the laptop with BBS software so that Debby can call me at the office from her computer at home. So can a host of friends and colleagues, some of them writers and reviewers. If I happen to be away from my desk when they call, they can leave messages. This world is still narrow, for people who enjoy communicating by computer tend to be hobbyists rather than the ordinary public. As time goes on, however, such equipment is likely to become cheaper, simpler to use, and as ubiquitous as an ordinary telephone.
For the larger world of the deaf, though, computers are still impractical for telephone communications. They’re expensive, and most people in the deaf community, who earn far less on the average than the hearing, can’t afford even the three or four hundred dollars a well-used, obsolescent computer might cost. Many who speak only American Sign Language, whose syntax bears little relation to that of English, feel uncomfortable attempting to keyboard-chat with hearing people in an unfamiliar language. For them and many others, TDDs are a better choice.
For all of us deaf, the ubiquitous facsimile machine, or fax, could be a godsend. Most businesses use at least one fax machine, and many individuals are installing them in their homes. They are even easier to operate than TDDs and far simpler to learn (as well as cheaper) than computers.
Early in 1990, chiefly to communicate easily with my publisher during the publicity and promotion preparations for the hardcover edition of this book, I purchased a fax machine. Quickly I found it a welcome addition to my general communications repertoire, and have been using it for all kinds of tasks, from calling the office to ordering a pizza. Now that I own a fax as well as a TDD and a computer, I almost never feel isolated when I’m working at home alone.
Another revolutionary electronic device that has made a large difference in my life as well as in the lives of almost all other deaf people is the closed-caption decoder. That’s a small “black box” plugged between the antenna and the TV set which transforms encoded electronic signals from television transmitters into captions on the screen, much like subtitles on foreign films. (A federal law passed in 1990 requires the decoder circuitry to be built into all television sets with screens 13 inches and larger sold in the United States after 1995.) Without the decoder, unneeded captions don’t clutter up the sets of hearing people. Thus the system is called “closed” captioning.
The television networks send videotapes of their shows to captioning specialists such as the National Captioning Institute in Falls Church, Virginia. There hearing listeners transcribe the dialogue on the tapes and encode it into captions on magnetic discs. The discs are then sent to the networks, where the caption signals are inserted electronically into the television picture, then transmitted along with the normal audio and video portions of the program.
The closed captioner first appeared in 1980 and since then has become the greatest electronic entertainment aid the deaf have ever had. Before it came along, even expert lipreaders had a hard time puzzling out what the “talking heads” were saying on the two-dimensional television screen. Voice-over narration deepened the fog.
I could easily follow only sports events. Movies were difficult unless I’d read the books on which they were based—if there were any. Talky British drawing-room dramas such as those showcased on Masterpiece Theatre might as well have been in Urdu for all I could understand of them. As for dramas and situation comedies, only shows with a lot of action were halfway comprehensible, and I’d have to fill in the gaps with my own imagination, inventing plot and dialogue to match the movements on-screen. The resulting “scenarios” often merely lampooned the genuine versions, as I would learn later, when the captioners came along. Often I’d prefer my fantasies to the real ones. That’s no tribute to my imagination but a measure of the clay-footedness of American television programming.
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Today almost all prime-time network shows are captioned, and PBS captions the majority of its evening programs. Though local news broadcasts are captioned in many cities, only in the last year have two Chicago stations captioned their news. Each year, however, the number of closedcaptioned shows grows.
The captions are not encoded verbatim. An actor might say, “Baby, how’s about you and me making a little whoopee?” But the caption instead might read: “Baby, let’s make love.” This foreshortening is done for two reasons. First, there might not be room on the screen to display a long-winded bit of dialogue, even in successive fragments. Second, on the average deaf viewers read more slowly than people speak, so some shrinking of dialogue is necessary for it to be displayed on-screen long enough for the viewers to read it.
Many of the spices and subtleties of language thus are lost. In the early days of closed captioning, for example, the plummy locutions of upperclass British English gave way to Standard Blandspeak in captions prepared for BBC imports on American public television. As time has gone on, however, the captioning companies evidently have determined that deaf viewers who tune in to PBS shows tend to be better educated and more sophisticated than those who watch commercial network television, and thus the captions can follow the actual dialogue more closely.
Then there is live, or “real-time,” closed captioning, performed on the fly by human transcribers with the help of computers, much like court reporters. In this manner all three commercial networks live-caption their news, their coverage of presidential addresses, and even some sports events. Live captioning is still in the process of development, and at times can be primitive—even hilarious. “Pulitzer Prize” might be rendered “pullet surprise,” and one morning an ABC weatherman advised his viewers, according to the captions, to “drivel carefully.” And fresh names and concepts in the news often are garbled unrecognizably until the proper spellings can be fed into the computer’s lexicon. There is also necessarily a delay between the spoken word and the appearance of the caption onscreen. The video might switch to the wreckage of a plane crash while the captions are still discussing a political event.