Right now Zoom doesn’t offer captioning in breakout rooms. It’s interesting thinking through the impact. Breakout rooms are usually for discussion, dissection, dissemination, application - interaction, a lot of the time. This means people who need captioning get none of this.

There’s a lot of people who need captioning, from people who can’t hear to people who can’t sign to Deaf people to people who are second language learners or in noisy environments to children who are learning English.... More, I’m sure. Many of those people right now miss out.

It’s one thing when you work or go to school with a big number of other Deaf people. The group makes their own space. Or they can work together to make change. For an isolated mainstream student who struggled in groups in person, what’s gonna happen this fall?

And the thing about self-advocacy, it’s hard if you’re in a new situation and don’t have power. How many pandemics have you been through online? What about an 8 year old in a mainstream classroom? Are they fully equipped to represent their needs in the fall online environment?

Having worked in mainstream schools I know how some students fall through the gaping crevices in our educational system. Today, I think a lot about the 90% of Deaf kids going into class online this fall, and I wonder, who’s making sure they can participate in Zoom rooms?

Mind you, if the school wants to, they could pay for a captioner to sit in the room and type what people say... but I have a sneaky feeling that’s not what most schools will do.

And the interesting, mind-blowing thing from a sociological, historicist sort of perspective is how this could change completely in a few months with technology upgrades.

Note: this thread isn’t an attack on Zoom. Zoom has made amazing strides with accessibility. It’s about situations, and convenience, shifting windows and the impossible task facing educators of trying to perceive, through those thin windows, the child waiting on the other side