C-Print Pioneers

Last May 28 to June 1, The Pre-College Education Network (P-CEN), in collaboration with DLS-CSB Center for Education Access and Development (CEAD), sponsored a one-week training of C-PRINT.

Pamela Francis of P-CEN and Cynthia Camp of Postsecondary Education Programs Network (PEP-NET) were the guest speakers tapped to introduce C-PRINT to the Philippines for the first time. Teaching faculty and staff from various DLS-CSB Schools and Centers volunteered to take part in this one-week training which will continue with online mentoring after the face to face lectures.

The 13 participants along with 4 observers from the implementing team volunteered their time and were willing to be the pioneer C-PRINT Captionists who will usher in this new technology for Deaf Access.

Over the course of the week, the participants experienced both little achievements and minor setbacks as they became familiar with the software, understood the skills they needed to improve over time, and accepted the responsibility of setting the standard for other future Captionists in the future.

Both Ms. Francis and Ms. Camp were very encouraging, reminding the participants every now and then that they are doing the best they can and that’s more than enough given the short period of training time. The commitment that comes after is what is important and they were happy with the zealous group of trainees who did above and beyond what is expected of them.

C-PRINT is a speech-to-text system developed at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) as a communication access service option for some deaf and hard-of-hearing students in educational environments. This is widely used in schools and universities in the United States. The goal of this endeavor is to observe how the system will work in the Philippine setting so adjustments can be made to accommodate Filipino Deaf culture and language.