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21 Responses to “Crowdsourcing Audio Transcription”

1. vika Says:
   June 18th, 2010 at 11:21 am

   OK! I’ll do Part 01 of Video 01.

2. vika Says:
   June 18th, 2010 at 11:39 am

   Here’s the Part 01 transcript.

   Mark and Pat Maurer
   (May 2010)

   MM: I am Mark Maurer, and I’m the president of the National Federation of the Blind. I’ve been the president since 1986, I have been a blind person all of my life, and I’ve been a member of the National Federation of the Blind since 1969. I am a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University Law School, and I have been a lawyer since 1977.

   PM: And I have been blind all my life, and Dr. Maurer and I have been married for, I don’t know, thirty-some years now. We have two children who’re grown, and I think that there are many many parents across this country today who have raised children, sighted and blind children. But there was a time when it wasn’t very often the case, and so we feel very blessed that we’ve been able to have our own family and raise our own children. I’m a former school teacher. I taught elementary school as a blind person. The first teaching job I got was to teach sighted kids to read. It was teaching third and fourth grade in a small school system in Iowa. I used Braille, and the children used print. I went from that job into some teaching when [while?] we lived in Indianapolis, and then running a rehabilitation program in Baltimore, Blind Industries & Services of Maryland. And then for the last twenty years or so I’ve worked at the national headquarters of the Federation at the Jernigan Institute now, and managed the committee relations program there. I like that very much. So that’s a little bit about us, I guess.

   How do you use Braille in everyday life?

   MM: I use Braille every day. I read reports that people give to me in Braille. [end]

3. Tom Says:
   June 18th, 2010 at 11:54 am

   Part 02 of Video 01 Transcript

   MAN:
   I use braille every day. I read reports that people give to me in braille. I make recordings of events that are happening within the national federation of the blind. And in order to make recordings about those events I expect the people who are conducting those events to give me a notice about them in braille. I look at financial documents for the organization and for some other organizations and in order to get a comparison of financial performance I use braille statistics so that I can have my fingers on the Braille performance for different years or maybe more than two years. I give speeches and in order to do that I very often want the text of the material that is going to be included in the speech under my hands. And I read Braille for fun. I read books. Some of them are non-fiction. I have recently read one about the financial circumstance of the United States in the 1980s which said that the possibility of a bubble in the housing market was remote. It might have been in the 1980s but in the first decade of the 21st century we experienced such a bubble. But I also read material in braille for enjoyment. Things like Huckelberry Finn and the like.

   WOMAN:
   My use of braille is some different in that a lot of the fiction and non-fiction books that I read I use audiobooks. But I use braille everyday in my job for a variety of things. I produce some documents that we use in the federation.

4. Carla Says:
   June 18th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

   Okay, I’m working on Part 05 of Video 01

5. Carla Says:
   June 18th, 2010 at 12:33 pm

   Part 05 transcript

   Key voices:
   Pat Maurer
   Mark Maurer
   Interviewer

   PM: …all the contractions, everything about braille and then I could use it the next fall when I went back to high school, and my first braille textbook was a French textbook, which I didn’t learn much about French because [heh] but I learned a lot about braille that

   Unknown person off camera: [laugh interrupts]

   PM: next year. And I think my real memory of all of that was that finally I had a way to read and write. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t, before that I hadn’t ever read much by myself because I couldn’t. By the time I was in second grade I couldn’t see any of the print anymore. And so, I was finally able to read for myself and she taught me with a slate and stylus so I was able to write things down for myself. And I, I didn’t get a braille writer ’til I graduated from college. So I took all of my notes in college with a slate and stylus which is a real good way to get good and fast on the slate. So, those are I guess my memories, and, and really it just has meant a great deal to me to have braille all these years.

   MM: I first met braille when I was in the first grade. I was sufficiently blind that the notion that I might read print was an impossibility, so everybody knew I would be a braille reader. And, I sat in the first grade in a classroom with sixteen students. there were eight of us in each row. I was the sixth person back in the first row. We got our Dick and Jane primers and we were told to open the cover of our primers, and to look at page one. And the first kid in the first row was asked to read page one And as the lesson went forward the teacher corrected the kid. And the second kid was asked to do the same, so by the time the teach…

6. Carla Says:
   June 18th, 2010 at 1:10 pm

   Working on Part 4 of Video 01 now.

7. Carla Says:
   June 18th, 2010 at 1:34 pm

   Part 04 transcript

   MM: …proofreading our braille letters. We got lots of letters from people. And a lot of times they come in braille. When the letters come in braille, we respond to them in braille. And just as we have a proofreading requirement to send out printed letters to people, we also have a proofreading requirement for braille letters. We never send anything out unless it’s been through the proofreading process. And Pat is our braille proofreader for that part of our effort.

   PM: I learned braille at sixteen which is kind of late opportunity for braille. I grew up in a rural area in Iowa and I wasn’t close to where the school for the blind was. And, I had quite a bit of residual vision, not a lot, I mean, but I had something I could read large print as a small child. So, nobody knew anybody that could teach me braille, nobody ever really considered teaching me braille. And, people read to me, my parents read to me, my friends and, you know by the time you get into middle school and you’re trying to do mathematics just by somebody reading to you and then you doing the problem in your head and then getting somebody else to write it down because you can’t really see to write it down anymore. This is the time when you realize that you have got to find another way. And I sought out the Commission for the Blind in Iowa. And Dr Kenneth Turnigan(sp?) was directing the, the programs there and I called him on the telephone. And I was about fifteen when I did this. And said, I need to find a way to learn braille. And he said, you know you’re not, this program is for adults, but he said, we can find a way. So he got the braille teacher to, during the summer, teach me braille in her spare time; I just went in in the morning at eight o’clock, stayed all day, and she taught me braille all day long and I learned it in a summer. You know, I learned all of the alphabet, all the contractions.

8. joanna Says:
   June 20th, 2010 at 11:28 am

   Working on part 5 of Video 01.

9. joanna Says:
   June 20th, 2010 at 11:29 am

   sorry–I meant #3.

10. joanna Says:
    June 20th, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    Mark and Pat Maurer
    May 2010
    Transcription of Part 3

    PM:. . . documents that we use at the Federation or that we take to conventions and give to people so, including the menus at the national conventions, so I proofread a lot of materials and produce a lot of materials in Braille, but every day one of my jobs is to take calls from people that call in and they want literature, they want our suggestions on things, so I have a great deal of compu. . . of material that I’ve produced over the years that I’ve put together and kept so that I can look things up for people including names and addresses and phone numbers and that kind of thing, and then of course I write their information down so I can send things out to them and I do that in Braille and I don’t think I could be without my Braillewriter to get that stuff written down or my slate and stylus– you know, once I’ve got it written down, I may put information into the computer and I may not keep the card that I wrote the information down on because I’m done with it. So it’s not a permanent record that I’m keeping, but you know an individual name and address that I need right now and I want to write down quickly.
    Another thing that I would do in Braille and probably wouldn’t do any other way is recipes. I can’t imagine cooking from information on cassette tape or in any other way than from a Braille recipe book.
    At Christmas time the Federation does the Santa Letter Program. We have letters to blind and low vision kids in Braille and large print that we send out. They can go to the NFE website at NFE.org and just type in their information their families can do it or the children can do it and get a letter back from Santa. So we’ve been doing this for three or four years and have learned about a lot about families this way who have blind or low vision kids. Also, don’t tell the kids, but of course, the letters come from Santa with our help.
    [Laughter]
    MM: She is also in charge of proofreading our Braille [end]

11. Millie Says:
    June 20th, 2010 at 1:14 pm

    This took about 30 minutes, but you know I am not quick with computer stuff: Transcription of Part 6 of Video 01.

    The teacher got to me and we had been over page one 5 times. I put my fingers on the page and recited the words on page 1. The teacher to my astonishment called me to the front of the room. She said that I was a magnificent student and she put a gold star on page one of my book

    I did not object of course the teacher was the person who was supposed to be in charge and I was just a student

    She told me that weekend. I was returned from the school for the blind that weekend but not all students did, but I did

    She told me to take my book home with me and show it to my mother. My mother is a suspicious woman. She took the book. She had already learned Braille herself because she thought she might need to know it. And She watched me doing the reading of page one she asked to borrow the book and she took it away and, she came back later with a piece of Braille paper that she asked me to read I could not read it and she told me that it was an exact copy of page one of my book

    When summer came after my first grade experience she sat me down again in the living room of our house for an hour every day and she required me to study Braille. And she taught me. I found this annoying because my brothers and….. didn’t have to learn any

    They were not in school in the summer time. I was the only one. But by the time summer was over I knew Braille and it….

12. George H. Williams Says:
    June 20th, 2010 at 5:11 pm

    I’ll take Part 07 of Video 01.

13. George H. Williams Says:
    June 20th, 2010 at 5:27 pm

    This took me about 15 or 20 minutes. Part 07 of Video 01 transcript:

    …you learn what’s in the book from the reading rather than learning to read from what’s in the book.

    Looking back now, what’s your opinion of how you were taught braille?

    PM: Well, I loved my braille teacher. She’s no longer living. She was a wonderful person. She would sit with her… I don’t know… usually have 3 or 4 students in there I think. And, you know, I was an extra because I was… and I was still in high school, and, of course, all the other people were adults in the program.

    So I would come in, and she would sit down, and she’d get her book out, and she’d be reading her own book and just let people read out loud from their textbooks. So she had… Sometimes she’d have to stop and show us our place or give us an explanation of a braille rule or a different letter or so on. But she was very relaxed and she was a little past middle age when she was working with me so, you know, I really was very comfortable with her and I loved her and I really enjoyed learning from her.

    So I don’t know if there was anything about the way that I was taught that was unusual, but it certainly was relaxed and, you know, I didn’t feel nervous or pressured or any of that kind of thing. So it was very enjoyable.

    MM: Well, my braille teacher was my mother, and loving your mother is not too hard [laughter] although being annoyed with her while she was teaching you braille is certainly possible [laughter].

    I don’t remember the lessons nearly as well as I remember the reading afterward. The lessons were there, and I was annoyed by them, but then they were gone, and the books were there, too. And my hands were giving me the chance to explore exciting worlds that would never have been a part of my life except for the literature that was under them. So, how I was taught was a very…

14. SarahT Says:
    June 20th, 2010 at 10:50 pm

    I’ll take Part 13 of Video 1.

15. SarahT Says:
    June 20th, 2010 at 11:23 pm

    Part 13 of Video 01 transcript:

    PM: … come to the convention and they can meet blind adults who are, you know, traveling through the convention, who have jobs, who can answer their questions and can talk to them. One of Dr. Maurer’s favorite things at the convention is to get together with the kids on the first morning of the parents’ meeting and talk to them about the things that they want to talk about.

    MM: I get the little kids who are four and five and six years old, and I sit on the floor with them, and they sometimes show me their stuffed animals, and I talk to them about what they’re going to be doing at the convention. One time I said to them at the convention, “You know, a lot of times, when you’re a blind person, you’re going to be lost. And this can be scary, but if you understand it, it isn’t scary, it’s a chance to find out new things. Don’t worry about being lost. I’ve been lost many times, and I’ve found my way to where I needed to go, and sometimes I learned some important things that I didn’t know, and it was lots of fun to be out there exploring.” And as I left the room, I heard one little kid talking to another little kid, and one of them said to the other, “Are you lost?” And the other one said, “Yes, I’m lost, but Dr. Maurer said it was okay.” [Laughter] And I just have great fun talking to these guys. “Don’t be afraid of your life. Look at your life as an adventure, and it will become an adventure for you. Lots of people can talk to you about being afraid of your life, [Laughter] but don’t believe in that. That’s not where your life is exciting. Your life is exciting because there are many things to do in it, and lots of them can be just plain good times.”

    PM: We have a Braille carnival, too, at the convention, where the kids come and play all kinds of Braille games, and they love that. And then we have a Braille book flea market, where people bring all their Braille books, and …

16. joanna Says:
    June 21st, 2010 at 10:17 am

    I’ll do #8.

17. joanna Says:
    June 21st, 2010 at 10:52 am

    Video 01 Clip 08

    Joanna Howard
    June 21, 2010

    MM: that I was taught has made the possibility of using Braille such an enormous benefit to me. I have taken testimony from people in court; I have made arguments to courts of appeals; I don’t dare walk into a courtroom without a sheaf of Braille in my briefcase that tells me what the legal arguments are going to be, what the testimony will consist of, and how I am to go about the process of defeating my opponent. There’s, There’s no way I know how to do this unless I’ve got written material that I can touch. If I were to try to listen to it on some recording device, sitting in the courtroom, it would distract me from knowing what’s going on and I couldn’t afford it. This is an enormous benefit, one that makes it possible for me to do the job that I like and to expand opportunities for me and for others.
    The statistics show that something between 80 and 85 percent of people who know Braille well find a way to get meaningful employment. They also show that about 70, somewhere between 70 and 74 percent, of blind people who are seeking employment are unemployed. In other words, Braille is so valuable to getting a job and becoming a part of the society in which we live, and not only that, reading it is fun.
    [No audio: white text across three black screens with question: “Some say that listening to books is not an example of literacy/and that only by reading Braille can a blind person be considered literate/ What’s your opinion? “ ]
    MM: I think there are different kinds of literacy and that you could not [end]

18. George H. Williams Says:
    June 23rd, 2010 at 8:37 am

    Thanks, everyone! In the interests of time, I went ahead and asked a student research assistant to finish transcribing the first video.

19. Kaitlin Says:
    June 23rd, 2010 at 4:20 pm

    I had a go at Part 01 of video 02.

    Kaitlin Walsh
    23 June 2010

    Well…[Laughter]…I grew up in the country, and I was an only girl, but I had three brothers. Oh, and they were teasing me all the time and I hated it. I had a little white pony who was as tall as I am here when I stand up, and I had her until my daddy said I got too heavy for her, so then we had to sell her, and because that…that broke my heart. But, and this…we…lived in the country. And really, down in the [???] section, and usually boarded, my daddy was a trustee of the school and boarded teachers and that kind of thing. And it gave us, I thought, good experiences with…with older, they were women, you know, maybe three women. And it was good. And, and, I enjoyed them, and, and…[Laughter]…I don’t know about whether or not they enjoyed me, they probably didn’t! I probably, I probably worried them to death. But anyway, it…it was, you know, it was very good, and I had a very good home, and…and daddy was pretty well to-do. And I was the only girl in the family so the boys gave me a terrible time, and one…and this has nothing to do with you, I’m sure [Laughter from off camera]…[???]…But one time, I had a friend spending the night and in the middle of the night my brother comes rolling from under the bed, just dying laughing, ’cause he’s been listening to all of our talk! [Laughter from off camera] And you know, girls and friends when they get together, and they’re spending the night together, I mean, you know the talk goes on. And then, he said…[end]

20. Susan Says:
    June 23rd, 2010 at 8:17 pm

    I’ll try part 2 of video 2

21. Susan Says:
    June 23rd, 2010 at 8:26 pm

    And here’s part 2 of video 2:

    fixed us a midnight lunch, and so we redeemed him. (Laughter) We forgave him. And, but anyway, but I had mama and daddy were very, what I want to say, they wanted the best for their children, OK? And I knew all the time that I was going to go to college, and my brothers went to Clemson but because they didn’t stay it wasn’t Daddy’s fault, you know. Anyway.

    How did you become a teacher of students of visual impairments?

    I became a teacher many years after I had graduated from college. And that was, Mr. Cleo Fennel was superintendent of education then, and Cleo was maybe about the age of my husband, and they were at Clemson together. But Clemson, he kinda always tried to get me to teach. He thought I should teach. But the thing was that I majored in Home Economics I loved Home Economics and I didn’t, I really didn’t want to teach and I didn’t have to teach. So but anyway, I kinda hung in there for a while and I don’t know who I talked to but I kinda found myself interested in this, what do you call it when they started these programs for the handicapped and the blind and the poorly sighted and this kind of thing, you know, and somehow, I, I suppose it was when they were stuck