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CAMERON: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Pivotal
Labs and the New York City Accessibility Meetup.

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Thank you for coming tonight.

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We're very excited to have our second meetup, 
and we're happy to have all of you here.

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So Pivotal Labs -- I just want to give a shoutout
for hosting us tonight.

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I work at Pivotal Labs.

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We're an agile development consultancy,

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doing mostly web development
and mobile app development.

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So if you have any needs in web development, 
or even web development with accessibility,

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we do that, so come talk to me.

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Today I'm excited to introduce to you Mirabai Knight, 


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who works on Plover, 
which is an open-source stenography tool.

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Without further ado, 
I'll let you introduce yourself, Mirabai.

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MIRABAI: Hello.

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Hi. My name is Mirabai Knight,
and I'm a stenographer.

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I won't keep doing that,
because we have Stan to caption me,

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but I just want to talk a little bit about Plover, 
my open source project,

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and the accessibility implications of it, 


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and then I'm going to hand it over
to Plover's lead developer,

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Hesky Fisher, and he'll talk a little bit about

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developing open source projects
that have accessibility implications

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and managing the community
and stuff along those lines.

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So how many people here
have actually seen a live captioner in action?

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Not on television, but in the room?

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That's awesome.

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That's definitely what I like to see in a room 
full of accessibility people.

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That's, like, probably 90% of the room.

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Glad to hear it.

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Because we're a fairly obscure
profession, even now.

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Steno machines have been around
since about 1912,

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but we were only hooked up to computers
as of the late 1980s, so as a profession,

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live captioning is very young, and most people,
if they have heard of it,

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only think of it for television and not for live applications.

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But myself, I work in universities, primarily, 
for Deaf and hard of hearing college students. 


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I also work with professionals
for business meetings and conferences.

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And it was around six years ago 
that I graduated from steno school.

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I'd gotten started as sort of an apprentice captioner, 


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and I was very frustrated
with my proprietary steno software,

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which cost $4000, had really obnoxious DRM

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that required me to jump through
all sorts of hoops even to use the software,

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and really limited my ability to use it
the way I wanted to.

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And it didn't have a number of key features 
that I really needed for my captioning work,


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because all commercial stenography software 
is for court reporters, which...

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I've never done any court reporting.

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So my brother had sort of infected me with the
open source bug when I was around ten years old.

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He's a big open source evangelist.

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And my frustration with the software, 


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combined with that sort of thought
in the back of my head

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that getting involved with open source
was a good thing to do,


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made me think that this might be the way to go.

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So originally I thought that I would actually 
have to learn to program and develop it myself,

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because I didn't think anyone could possibly
want to do it for me.

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But by a ridiculous stroke of luck, 


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I put a posting in the elevator
of my coworking space,

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asking for a Python tutor,

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and the guy who answered it 
and started off tutoring me in Python --

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it turned out that he had a PhD 
from the MIT Media Lab,

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and was both a hardware and a software guy,
and after a few weeks it was clear

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that I did not have a gift for programming, 
and starting from scratch it would be forever

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before I was able to develop 
the software that I actually wanted.

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But he got so excited about it,

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he decided he was just going to take over
the development from me and do it on his own.

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I paid him as much as I could, 
but he worked at a steep discount.

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So he developed Plover for about a year.

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Then he got another job and had to give it up.

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When Hesky, my savior,

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contacted me out of the blue, 
because his girlfriend was in steno school.

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Actually, the same steno school
that I graduated from.

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And he wanted to do his part to make steno 
cheap and accessible.

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So he's been developing it ever since.

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He's amazing,
and he'll tell you all about that story later.

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But basically...

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I can go over the nuts and bolts
of steno if you want,

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maybe in the questions,
if you're curious about the details,

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but because I don't have that much time,

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I think I want to focus more on the potential
of steno in various accessibility areas.

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So first off, I think,
It's pretty obvious: Captioning.

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This guy right here, Stan Sakai, my captioner, 
actually started out on Plover.

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He originally just wanted to use steno to take notes 
when he was in college,

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but he wound up getting so excited about it,

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he taught himself, you know, 
and practiced ten hours a night

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for about a year, and finally realized
that he had gotten up to

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about 230 words per minute,

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which is the speed you really
need to be a entry-level captioner,

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and I think dropped out of college
and launched his career as a captioner.

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I think he's pretty happy about it.

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He didn't do that with Plover the whole way.


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He actually switched to proprietary software,


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because Plover wasn't in 
the proper shape at that point,

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But I still count him as one of our success stories.

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So captioning for Deaf and hard of hearing
people is incredibly important.

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It's very useful for all sorts of people,

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but primarily people with hearing loss
who don't know sign language

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or might not even 
acknowledge their hearing loss,

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which is the vast majority of people
who have hearing loss


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that interferes with their life moderately
to significantly in some situations,


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but not at all in others.

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These are people -- often they've begun to lose
their hearing in middle age,

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and that carries through to, you know,
into their 60s and 70s.

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They don't acknowledge their hearing loss, 
they don't necessarily recognize it,

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and they have no idea what they can do to compensate for it.

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Hearing aids can only do so much.

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Many of them are not candidates
for cochlear implants, 


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and they often don't know that captioning exists.

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But along the way,
as this accommodation has sort of picked up speed,

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more and more captioning is offered 
as a matter of course, 


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not necessarily specifically
requested by Deaf advocates

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who know their rights and are able to ask for it,
but it's just become an included accommodation,

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and so this sort of invisible pool of people 
who don't know that they have rights under

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the Americans with Disabilities Act, 
who may be fine one-on-one in a small room,

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but who are totally at sea in a large auditorium, 
where they can't read anyone's lips --

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they're finally beginning to realize
that there's an accommodation 


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that works for them.

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Also there are people who use sign interpreters 
in some situations, 


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who prefer captioning in other situations.

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You know, they might want to have sign interpretation for conversational, or mobile, or very interactive sessions,

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but for things like lectures, where there's very
specific terminology

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that might not have specific analogs in sign,
captioning might be better.

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Captioning is also really useful for people
with attention deficit disorder,

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it's useful for some people with dyslexia, 
which might seem counterintuitive,

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but having the bimodal input of getting something
both from your ears and into your eyes at the same time

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can often help people to comprehend information
and process information more thoroughly,

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even if they have a reading disability.

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It's also extremely useful for people who are
not necessarily fluent in English,

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or can read it better than they can understand it aurally,

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which is true of a lot of people who are just learning English.


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So captioning as Universal Design, I think,
is really important.

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I probably don't have to make the case too hard for you guys,

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but I just thought I'd lay out all of the ways
that captioning benefits a lot of people,

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including that often-neglected pool of people
who don't self-identify as having a disability,

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and don't know their rights under the ADA, 
which is a very large group of people

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who have been almost totally neglected 
by traditional accessibility solutions.

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So that's one option, 
one sort of way that stenography is useful in accessibility.

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Another way is for people with speech disabilities
who want to communicate,

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who might use augmentative communication devices,

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but if any of you guys have seen those in action, 
you'll know that even the best of them are very slow,

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and, to a certain degree, somewhat stilted.

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If people are just using qwerty to type,
they can do maybe 100, 120 words a minute.

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If people are using systems such as Minspeak,

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they can sort of cluster ideas
and get the sentences out somewhat faster,

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but even so, they're nowhere near
a conversational level of speech.

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But with steno,
you can basically write as fast as you can talk.

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And if you just hook this into a text-to-speech engine,
and you make it portable,

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which is still something I'm working on,
you can make an AAC device that allows people to speak

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at a conversational speed,
which is unprecedented and somewhat revolutionary.

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So I think that's a really important thing
that we can look forward to in the future.

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There aren't yet any really good mobile
or portable steno input devices,

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but I think there's a lot of potential for that.

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I'm also working on an application
that hooks Plover into Glass.

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I've got a pair of Glass, 
and I've got someone developing an app for it,

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so I think that having that sort of feedback will also be useful.

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Certainly make it more mobile and portable.

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The third area, and I think this one might
be particularly of interest to you guys,

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is addressing the terrible underemployment of blind
and low-vision people,

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in this country and around the world.

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There are incredibly well-educated,
brilliant, fantastic minds out there

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that are going to waste,
because no one will employ them,

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and one thing specifically that makes
stenography a really good fit for people with vision loss

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is that text processing speed,
or rather speech processing speed, I think,


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is the fundamental bottleneck of steno.

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If you look at Stan, 
or if you look at me when I'm writing,

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our fingers are not moving particularly quickly.

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People might think that it's a matter of dexterity, 
but it's really all what happens in the brain.

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To be able to comprehend English speech 
very quickly and to encode it into steno,

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and then send the code to your fingers,
of those three steps,

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by far the hardest is comprehending English
without slowing down and seizing up

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when people are speaking to you at 240, 
260, 280 words a minute.

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Those speeds are very fast for your typical English speaker.

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They're quite slow for your typical screen reader user.

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I know people who use screen readers
who listen to them at 500, 600 words per minute.

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So for people who have already done the work
training their brains to process speech at that level --

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I don't have any scientific evidence for this,
but I think there's a very good chance

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that they've already done a lot of the really hard work,
and if they want to try to learn stenography,

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I think they will have a considerable leg
up over most people, who, honestly,

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find themselves very hard pressed to achieve
the speeds of 230 words per minute

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that are required to be captioners, 
court reporters, and CART providers like me.

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There's an 85% dropout rate in steno schools nationwide,
which is pretty disgraceful,

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but I think a lot of that is because people do not have
the sufficient speech processing speed going into it,

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and they're not able to develop it while they're in school.

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So those are my three ideas
for how stenography can impact accessibility.

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And now, with Plover, which is free,

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and works with hardware that's $45, 
as opposed to this little number, which is about $4000,

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I feel like we might be poised on the edge
of a sort of Steno Renaissance.


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I'm really hoping to get that going.

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So I'm going to turn it over to Hesky,
and he'll tell you all about how this goes.

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HESKY: Static. 


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Is this working?

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Excellent.

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Hi, everyone.

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I'm Hesky, and I'm the lead developer on Plover right now.

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As Mirabai said,
my girlfriend enrolled in stenography school,

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and I wanted to learn a little bit about it.

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It's very hard to find information about stenography out there,

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and it turns out that Mirabai's blog is, I think,
the only well-written description of it on the Internet.

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I found it, and then I saw that she was
working on this project,

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and I just wanted to make it useful for us, 
so I started adding features that I needed,

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and basically I just started working on it for fun.


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I never thought of myself as an accessibility programmer, 
despite the sort of obvious connection,

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until I was asked to speak here.

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And I started to think about what 
I generally think of as accessibility programming,

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and how that relates to what I do, 
and I saw some parallels beyond Plover's use case.

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(clearing throat)

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Excuse me.

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I think that accessibility programming, 
like coding for Plover,

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often involves an intention,

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without necessarily having the skill first, 
of doing something incredibly complicated.

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So if you want to make some application usable,
write that app or operating system or whatever,

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then you suddenly have to become an expert into it, 
beyond what a normal developer would have to know,

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to somehow dig into its guts,
and make it give you its text,

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or change its colors or anything like that.

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And that's what it's been like, 
developing Plover.

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From the very beginning, writing normal code
to do the logic that Plover needs to do is fairly easy.

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But then, suddenly, I had to convince the operating system
to do things that it desperately did not want to do.

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As you can see, it involves things
like being on top of other applications,

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or, you know,
coming up, going down.

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And then, of course, the community wanted
it for every operating system out there.

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So that became a journey of suddenly trying
to become that type of expert

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on every operating system that I could get my hands on,
and similar things like that.

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For example, Josh was the original programmer on Plover
that Mirabai mentioned.

219
00:15:51,109 --> 00:15:57,051
He is quite amazing, and he is working on building
an open source stenography machine.

220
00:15:57,051 --> 00:16:02,393
The machine that Mirabai uses here is $4000,
and that's not unusual.

221
00:16:02,393 --> 00:16:06,463
And Josh is trying to target a much, much lower pricepoint.

222
00:16:06,463 --> 00:16:08,283
I don't know exactly what that's going to be yet.

223
00:16:08,283 --> 00:16:09,888
And I'm helping out.

224
00:16:11,709 --> 00:16:12,453
MIRABAI: $300.

225
00:16:12,612 --> 00:16:13,724
HESKY: $300.

226
00:16:13,845 --> 00:16:14,968
That's very good.


227
00:16:15,035 --> 00:16:19,039
So that's orders of mag...
That's very good.

228
00:16:19,039 --> 00:16:21,996
So I started from scratch.

229
00:16:22,466 --> 00:16:25,903
Again, I had the intention -- I'd like to make
a machine that's a stenography machine.

230
00:16:25,903 --> 00:16:31,622
But I don't know any of the required techniques that I need.

231
00:16:31,622 --> 00:16:37,204
So once again, you know, one minor example is:

232
00:16:37,204 --> 00:16:39,529
Usually the machine speaks via USB.

233
00:16:39,673 --> 00:16:42,087
I had never done any USB.

234
00:16:42,087 --> 00:16:47,248
I had always thought it would be a good idea to learn USB, 
but like many people, I had an idea

235
00:16:47,248 --> 00:16:52,013
that I wanted to learn hardware engineering,
but I never had a project I wanted to do.

236
00:16:52,013 --> 00:16:54,981
Well, the problem is: 
Once you get to the project to do,

237
00:16:54,981 --> 00:17:04,038
then you have an intention now, but you haven't built that skill, 
and it's kind of a Catch-22.

238
00:17:04,038 --> 00:17:12,304
So if I can encourage anybody to start with projects earlier 
and build up the skills that become necessary 


239
00:17:12,304 --> 00:17:15,376
as soon as you know what you actually want to do.


240
00:17:15,376 --> 00:17:25,008
So the other aspect of working on Plover that's 
interesting and similar to usability is --

241
00:17:25,008 --> 00:17:29,511
for many people who do accessibility programming -- 
I'm not the user.

242
00:17:29,511 --> 00:17:35,721
So it's very hard to...

243
00:17:35,721 --> 00:17:41,995
I'm not a stenographer, and it's quite difficult
to guess what a stenographer actually wants,

244
00:17:42,117 --> 00:17:45,914
especially when I'm making up a feature.

245
00:17:45,914 --> 00:17:51,081
Even when I'm asked explicitly
for a feature, I'm interpreting it, you know,

246
00:17:51,081 --> 00:17:52,748
based on my understanding of it.

247
00:17:52,748 --> 00:17:57,272
And I think that probably has a lot in common 
if you're doing something for a user

248
00:17:57,272 --> 00:17:59,457
that's hearing-disabled or vision-disabled.

249
00:18:00,560 --> 00:18:04,724
You can only put yourself in their shoes so well.

250
00:18:04,724 --> 00:18:09,266
And so the most valuable tool that Plover has
is its community.

251
00:18:09,266 --> 00:18:13,181
To constantly throw things out there and encourage feedback.

252
00:18:13,181 --> 00:18:21,657
There's no way I could have made any progress without 
the Plover community constantly giving feedback.


253
00:18:21,657 --> 00:18:23,043
Some of it not so polite.

254
00:18:23,043 --> 00:18:26,962
But that's still very worthwhile.

255
00:18:26,962 --> 00:18:31,945
And I think that has a lot of parallels, here, too.

256
00:18:31,945 --> 00:18:38,294
So, speaking of the community,
I did not realize that I would become a babysitter,

257
00:18:38,294 --> 00:18:41,241
taking on this programming role.

258
00:18:41,241 --> 00:18:44,735
As soon as I had a official position, 
where I was the main programmer,

259
00:18:44,735 --> 00:18:52,029
suddenly it kind of became my responsibility to make sure
that the community didn't self-destruct, at times.

260
00:18:52,029 --> 00:18:57,814
Every mailing list that's able to be
joined openly will attract...

261
00:18:57,814 --> 00:19:01,367
Different types of destructive elements.

262
00:19:01,367 --> 00:19:06,127
People who post about their pet peeve
on something unrelated.

263
00:19:06,127 --> 00:19:15,145
But less destructive are people who are passionate 
about the project, but want it to go in their direction.

264
00:19:16,148 --> 00:19:18,659
And it's really hard to deal
with that kind of thing.

265
00:19:18,659 --> 00:19:21,163
Because it goes in two directions.


266
00:19:21,163 --> 00:19:28,598
I want to take their feedback, and it's extremely
valid in most cases, but then, very often,

267
00:19:28,598 --> 00:19:32,274
it immediately starts to conflict with, say,
my vision of where I think the project should go.

268
00:19:32,388 --> 00:19:37,410
But then I have to ask myself fairly: 
Is my vision the right one?

269
00:19:37,410 --> 00:19:38,120
Right?

270
00:19:38,120 --> 00:19:40,159
These are responses from the users.

271
00:19:40,159 --> 00:19:44,354
And in Plover's case, there's actually 
an interesting split between the users.

272
00:19:44,354 --> 00:19:48,371
There are the people that I think of as stenographers.

273
00:19:48,371 --> 00:19:52,268
People who are going to stenography school, 
or tried stenography school and are now learning

274
00:19:52,268 --> 00:19:55,926
on their own or out of books, but sort of classic stenography,

275
00:19:55,926 --> 00:20:02,087
and they agree to be bound by the restrictions and rules 
that all stenographers work by.

276
00:20:02,087 --> 00:20:04,616
And there's the blue sky users.

277
00:20:04,616 --> 00:20:07,177
People who show up to stenography and say, 
"That's great.

278
00:20:07,177 --> 00:20:10,312
Now, how can we make it a hundred times better?"

279
00:20:10,312 --> 00:20:15,472
Let's add 30 more buttons, 
and let's map the keyboard to everything."

280
00:20:15,472 --> 00:20:23,090
And, again, I have to try to 
balance this notion with...

281
00:20:23,242 --> 00:20:25,385
Well, that's not what this app is for.

282
00:20:25,385 --> 00:20:31,772
But maybe it is, 
because these make up a certain number of users,

283
00:20:31,772 --> 00:20:35,029
and maybe I'm the crazy one, right?

284
00:20:35,029 --> 00:20:38,786
They've got the million dollar idea,
and I'm just saying that's stupid.

285
00:20:38,786 --> 00:20:40,233
Let's not do it.

286
00:20:40,233 --> 00:20:43,735
And so it's a complicated balance.

287
00:20:43,735 --> 00:20:45,127
A balancing act.

288
00:20:45,127 --> 00:20:47,566
To try to figure out which is the right way to go.

289
00:20:47,566 --> 00:20:52,222
If I had a simple answer, this talk would be shorter,

290
00:20:52,222 --> 00:20:57,806
But I'd say I just have to wait.

291
00:20:57,806 --> 00:20:59,745
And it's not clear that I always make the right decision,

292
00:20:59,745 --> 00:21:05,498
but what I try very hard to do
is to not make that irreversible,

293
00:21:05,498 --> 00:21:07,103
in the sense that I just shoot it down.

294
00:21:07,103 --> 00:21:10,946
I usually just say, "That sounds great, but I don't have the time.

295
00:21:11,080 --> 00:21:16,719
But maybe if you would like to contribute that,
that would be fantastic."

296
00:21:16,719 --> 00:21:20,120
And that's the nice thing about open-source projects,
is it does attract people who are passionate

297
00:21:20,120 --> 00:21:23,003
and capable of contributing.

298
00:21:23,003 --> 00:21:29,940
And so we do get contributions, people who write code
for us, and some of our best features come that way.

299
00:21:29,940 --> 00:21:36,031
And when that started happening,
I felt like we had truly achieved a vibrant

300
00:21:36,031 --> 00:21:43,314
and self-supporting community, and I think 
that should be the goal for every open source program.

301
00:21:43,314 --> 00:21:50,552
If I'm the only programmer, then that's a strong
single source of failure for our entire project.

302
00:21:50,552 --> 00:21:56,395
So those are all the points that I wanted to touch.


303
00:21:56,395 --> 00:21:58,084
It's time for Q&A.

304
00:21:58,084 --> 00:22:00,185
You can ask me, or Mirabai, or both.

305
00:22:08,666 --> 00:22:11,366
CAMERON: If you have any questions,
please raise your hand, and I'll give you the mic.

306
00:22:16,580 --> 00:22:17,392
HESKY: Testing.


307
00:22:19,467 --> 00:22:21,042
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was wondering...

308
00:22:21,042 --> 00:22:25,972
You guys both touched on Plover being
free and also open source,

309
00:22:25,972 --> 00:22:28,167
and the kind of community around that.

310
00:22:28,167 --> 00:22:31,806
Do you think that the freeness,
in terms of monetary cost,

311
00:22:31,806 --> 00:22:35,916
was a big decision about why people use Plover?


312
00:22:35,916 --> 00:22:37,903
Like, to get people into it?

313
00:22:37,903 --> 00:22:39,766
MIRABAI: Huge. Huge.

314
00:22:39,766 --> 00:22:46,645
Right now, your options -- discounting Plover -- your options
for stenography software are, I guess, threefold.


315
00:22:46,645 --> 00:22:50,561
There's a free app -- free as in beer, not as in speech --

316
00:22:50,561 --> 00:22:53,785
app on the iPad that's basically useless.

317
00:22:53,785 --> 00:23:00,271
It pretends to emulate a steno machine, but without haptic feedback it's almost impossible to actually use it.

318
00:23:00,271 --> 00:23:01,711
So there's that.

319
00:23:01,711 --> 00:23:04,998
But that actually came around after Plover got started.

320
00:23:04,998 --> 00:23:09,124
There's student software, which is around $500.

321
00:23:09,124 --> 00:23:14,868
You have to have proof of enrollment in a steno school,
and it's missing a lot of key features.

322
00:23:14,868 --> 00:23:18,495
Like, it doesn't allow you to save files.

323
00:23:18,495 --> 00:23:22,979
It basically just restricts you so massively
that you can barely do anything with it.

324
00:23:23,064 --> 00:23:29,439
And then there's the $4000 court reporting software,
which is fully featured for court reporters,

325
00:23:29,439 --> 00:23:32,188
but obviously not accessible to most people.

326
00:23:32,188 --> 00:23:38,738
So for hobbyists, amateurs, people who want to use steno to write novels, people who want to use it to code software,


327
00:23:38,738 --> 00:23:41,556
Plover had to be free.

328
00:23:41,556 --> 00:23:43,166
I mean, that was just the only way.

329
00:23:43,166 --> 00:23:47,994
There's enough of a barrier to entry just in the learning curve of learning how to do stenography

330
00:23:47,994 --> 00:23:52,802
that making the software completely free,
and making the hardware about $50,

331
00:23:53,138 --> 00:23:55,914
which is what it is right now,
the cheapest option to interface with Plover,

332
00:23:55,914 --> 00:24:00,786
that had to be in place before we could start 
making the big push to get people to learn Plover.

333
00:24:00,786 --> 00:24:02,383
Which, by the way, speaking of Learn Plover,

334
00:24:02,383 --> 00:24:05,778
the author of our textbook,
Zachary Brown, is back there.

335
00:24:05,814 --> 00:24:11,112
He's collaborating with me to write a free online textbook
to teach people stenography,

336
00:24:11,266 --> 00:24:15,505
which we hope also will someday
get turned into an interactive video game,

337
00:24:15,505 --> 00:24:17,380
which will hopefully make it even more accessible.

338
00:24:18,729 --> 00:24:20,354
HESKY: I just wanted to add a little bit to that.

339
00:24:20,354 --> 00:24:22,736
It's very clear from our users that money is an object,

340
00:24:25,487 --> 00:24:34,814
and that expresses itself technically by very difficult questions
on how to get Plover running on older and older machines,

341
00:24:34,814 --> 00:24:43,089
and, in fact, some people on the group have gone so far as defining "accessibility" as "working on their computers",

342
00:24:43,089 --> 00:24:46,689
and I'm only half-kidding.

343
00:24:46,689 --> 00:24:48,002
MIRABAI: No, it's true.

344
00:24:48,002 --> 00:24:53,957
HESKY: And it could be almost heartbreaking
when they tell you that, like...

345
00:24:54,120 --> 00:24:56,862
"So I've finally got all
the equipment together!"

346
00:24:56,862 --> 00:25:01,284
And then I have to tell them that they have to buy some cable,
and it just breaks the bank,

347
00:25:01,284 --> 00:25:03,288
because they have to connect things.

348
00:25:03,288 --> 00:25:07,313
And it's just...

349
00:25:07,625 --> 00:25:10,994
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a follow-up on that.

350
00:25:10,994 --> 00:25:15,932
So if somebody wants to get Plover or contribute to Plover,
what is the website?

351
00:25:15,932 --> 00:25:25,342
MIRABAI: The website is ploversteno.org.

352
00:25:25,342 --> 00:25:29,193
HESKY: All right, we actually suffer from too many websites.

353
00:25:29,193 --> 00:25:39,182
MIRABAI: Well, Sveta, right here, amazing usability expert,
user experience designer, and web designer

354
00:25:39,182 --> 00:25:42,779
is actually helping us consolidate
our websites into one general hub,

355
00:25:42,779 --> 00:25:45,649
so that people can just go to just one page
and find what they're looking for there,

356
00:25:45,649 --> 00:25:48,804
instead of the terrible sort of fractured sprawl
we have right now.

357
00:25:49,275 --> 00:25:51,119
Thank you, Sveta!

358
00:25:52,749 --> 00:26:00,964
HESKY: Right now there is the blog, the code,
the download page, the wiki, the forum,

359
00:26:00,964 --> 00:26:05,909
the mailing list, the textbook.

360
00:26:08,615 --> 00:26:09,704
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi.

361
00:26:09,704 --> 00:26:13,314
You mentioned the 85% dropout rate from steno school.

362
00:26:13,314 --> 00:26:20,086
Is there any conversation either in Plover
or within the larger community about how to work on that?

363
00:26:22,615 --> 00:26:25,091
MIRABAI: I could speak about this for hours.

364
00:26:25,091 --> 00:26:28,724
I think there are a lot of economic components.


365
00:26:28,724 --> 00:26:30,350
(mic booming)


366
00:26:30,350 --> 00:26:40,147
Sorry. I think, to a large degree, that dropout rate is because: 
A) steno's very difficult to do at a high level.

367
00:26:40,147 --> 00:26:42,122
Meaning professional speeds.

368
00:26:42,122 --> 00:26:46,267
I think it's much less difficult to do at sort of 
general conversational speed,

369
00:26:46,267 --> 00:26:48,558
or for text composition and text entry.

370
00:26:48,558 --> 00:26:52,907
I think that's a pretty reasonable goalpost for most people.

371
00:26:52,907 --> 00:26:54,791
But actual professional steno speeds,

372
00:26:54,889 --> 00:26:59,804
230 to 240 words per minute, 
very difficult for many people.

373
00:26:59,804 --> 00:27:05,753
The other thing to consider is that a lot of people
are going into steno school who don't necessarily


374
00:27:05,753 --> 00:27:09,039
have the baseline language skills in English.

375
00:27:09,039 --> 00:27:15,459
It's seen as sort of a clerical field,
and a good middle class career.

376
00:27:15,459 --> 00:27:21,519
But most of the schools are for-profit,
and there aren't really any admission requirements.

377
00:27:21,519 --> 00:27:25,057
So they'll basically recruit on the subways;
they'll tell everyone to just come in.

378
00:27:25,057 --> 00:27:31,826
They'll sell them the $1,000 student steno machine,
let them go through a theory class,

379
00:27:31,826 --> 00:27:36,095
after a certain point, these students don't
get to their goal speeds,

380
00:27:36,095 --> 00:27:39,897
their financial aid runs out, they're not passing tests,
they drop out,

381
00:27:39,897 --> 00:27:44,682
they sell their machine back to the school,
the school sells it back again to another set of students.

382
00:27:44,682 --> 00:27:50,557
So there isn't really any incentive for these
for-profit schools to improve the graduation rates.

383
00:27:50,557 --> 00:27:54,157
And, honestly, I mean, even the ones that acting 
in good faith and trying to graduate

384
00:27:54,157 --> 00:27:55,723
as many students of possible --

385
00:27:55,723 --> 00:28:03,296
the pool of people entering steno school is not necessarily the people who have the baseline skills necessary to succeed.

386
00:28:03,296 --> 00:28:07,841
So my solution is just to make steno not
something you have to go to school for,

387
00:28:07,841 --> 00:28:10,778
and that you don't have to buy a $1,000 machine for
and pay tuition for.

388
00:28:10,778 --> 00:28:14,743
Make steno something that, 
if you want to give it a try and see if you have a knack for it,

389
00:28:14,743 --> 00:28:17,882
and play around with it, you know, play a video game
a couple hours a night,

390
00:28:17,882 --> 00:28:23,718
and see if your speed takes off, because you're just
one of those inherently inborn natural stenographers,

391
00:28:23,918 --> 00:28:25,264
like Stan --

392
00:28:25,264 --> 00:28:30,903
that's something you can do without risking
a ton of time and money and effort and risk.

393
00:28:31,491 --> 00:28:34,063
HESKY: Just quickly wanted to add that,

394
00:28:34,063 --> 00:28:37,210
because of the structure of how you learn steno,
you enroll in school,

395
00:28:37,210 --> 00:28:42,297
you have the large initial outlay for the equipment,
software, and tuition, and then,

396
00:28:42,297 --> 00:28:45,426
when you realize that you're not going to make it in the profession, there's a huge frustration,

397
00:28:45,426 --> 00:28:48,204
and usually a complete dumping of the thing.

398
00:28:48,204 --> 00:28:52,803
You sell your old machine back, your old textbooks,
and you move on.

399
00:28:52,803 --> 00:28:56,795
And it's unfortunate, because of that structure,
dropping out is considered a failure.

400
00:28:56,795 --> 00:29:01,466
Because the person who drops out
could have reached 130, 180, or something like that,

401
00:29:01,466 --> 00:29:03,123
and that's a useful skill in and of itself,

402
00:29:03,233 --> 00:29:06,458
but that's not what they signed up for in terms of schooling.

403
00:29:06,458 --> 00:29:13,074
We're hoping that, with people having open source
and free methods, that that's not a failure.

404
00:29:13,074 --> 00:29:17,161
That's just reaching a very, very good typing speed.

405
00:29:19,059 --> 00:29:19,775
There's one.

406
00:29:19,923 --> 00:29:21,573
He already has the mic.

407
00:29:21,573 --> 00:29:23,501
Somebody already has the microphone.


408
00:29:28,427 --> 00:29:31,806
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm hearing in this talk sort of --

409
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:34,501
it sounds like there's two separate communities.


410
00:29:34,501 --> 00:29:38,409
There's the steno schools and closed source software
and closed source hardware,

411
00:29:38,409 --> 00:29:44,932
and all of the stuff that goes around that point of view, 
I guess, and then there's Plover

412
00:29:44,932 --> 00:29:47,067
and the community that's built around that.

413
00:29:47,067 --> 00:29:48,804
And I'm wondering...

414
00:29:48,804 --> 00:29:51,971
What are their relative sizes?

415
00:29:51,971 --> 00:29:53,259
Are they really separate communities?

416
00:29:53,404 --> 00:29:56,563
And is Plover changing what is steno?

417
00:29:56,563 --> 00:29:59,758
Or is steno still what it always has been?

418
00:29:59,758 --> 00:30:03,649
And what's the social relationship between the two communities?

419
00:30:03,649 --> 00:30:04,520
Are they getting along?


420
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:07,191
Is there animosity?

421
00:30:07,191 --> 00:30:07,684
HESKY: Can I take this one?

422
00:30:07,684 --> 00:30:08,746
MIRABAI: Yeah, go for it.

423
00:30:08,746 --> 00:30:11,464
HESKY: Mirabai will probably
have more to add to this,

424
00:30:11,464 --> 00:30:19,981
but we've done at least one demo session at the local school,
for students to see, and Plover's still adding features

425
00:30:19,981 --> 00:30:23,043
that some of the other software comes with.

426
00:30:23,043 --> 00:30:27,585
I don't know how it's going to go in the future,
but the relationship between Plover

427
00:30:27,585 --> 00:30:34,417
and the software companies and hardware companies
is between being ignored and being hostile.

428
00:30:38,863 --> 00:30:41,619
AUDIENCE MEMBER: But there have been
some hardware donations, right?

429
00:30:41,745 --> 00:30:42,708
HESKY: That's true.


430
00:30:42,708 --> 00:30:45,242
So what has happened is that, like every world,

431
00:30:45,242 --> 00:30:50,016
there are underdogs, and the underdogs
have been far friendlier than the entrenched players.

432
00:30:50,016 --> 00:30:54,000
Right, I should have acknowledged that some
of the companies have been friendly.

433
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:59,349
But, you know, the hardware, for example,

434
00:30:59,349 --> 00:31:04,265
comes with protocols that have to be decoded
in order to work with them,

435
00:31:04,265 --> 00:31:11,975
and several companies have been very aggressive
about not letting us get to the protocol.

436
00:31:11,975 --> 00:31:16,007
And it's a very small world.

437
00:31:16,007 --> 00:31:21,391
I think at this point I've spoken
to all the CEOs randomly, by email.

438
00:31:21,391 --> 00:31:29,009
And I've heard that one person who volunteered 
to work on one aspect of Plover

439
00:31:29,173 --> 00:31:33,588
actually had a salesperson, like, target him.

440
00:31:33,588 --> 00:31:35,907
It was a very bizarre story.

441
00:31:35,907 --> 00:31:40,359
But (inaudible)...

442
00:31:40,359 --> 00:31:43,300
MIRABAI: I can speak just in terms of numbers.


443
00:31:43,300 --> 00:31:49,386
I think there are around 30,000 active 
professional stenographers in the country.

444
00:31:49,386 --> 00:31:54,163

There's around 250 users on the Plover mailing list, which --

445
00:31:54,163 --> 00:31:57,025
they're our most active and most engaged users.

446
00:31:57,025 --> 00:31:58,995
I don't know exactly how many downloads there are.

447
00:31:58,995 --> 00:32:07,203
So right now, the proportion of Plover users
to professional stenographers is very, very skewed.

448
00:32:07,203 --> 00:32:10,994
But I think and hope that
that will change pretty drastically,

449
00:32:10,994 --> 00:32:15,711
and honestly, from companies, 
software and hardware vendors,

450
00:32:15,852 --> 00:32:20,386
there's a certain wariness directed towards us,
but from professional stenographers,

451
00:32:20,386 --> 00:32:26,356
by and large, there's been a lot of encouragement, 
because a lot of people are worried that this technology

452
00:32:26,356 --> 00:32:29,933
is vanishing, that the profession is dying.


453
00:32:29,933 --> 00:32:35,297
You know, the average age of a professional stenographer,
I heard somewhere, was something like 55 years old,

454
00:32:35,297 --> 00:32:39,397
and as more and more people reach retirement age,

455
00:32:39,397 --> 00:32:44,883
and fewer and fewer younger people are graduating,
it really leaves the profession vulnerable

456
00:32:45,012 --> 00:32:53,323
to being co-opted by less accurate, less useful, non-verbatim
technologies to just fill the vacuum that's left behind

457
00:32:53,323 --> 00:32:56,731
if there aren't any stenographers
to keep the place open.

458
00:32:56,731 --> 00:33:02,839
So most professional stenographers that I've talked to are very excited about Plover and are very encouraging.

459
00:33:02,839 --> 00:33:05,668
So we'll see what happens.


460
00:33:05,668 --> 00:33:17,840
CAMERON: We're going to have one more question,
and then we'll take a quick break.

461
00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:19,093
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a comment as a Deaf person.

462
00:33:19,093 --> 00:33:22,697
I think that it's great for...

463
00:33:22,697 --> 00:33:31,073
I think that Plover is great for people who are trying
to help people become stenographers

464
00:33:31,073 --> 00:33:33,895
and encourage that profession, but as a deaf person, myself,

465
00:33:33,895 --> 00:33:38,245
I think that it's frustrating sometimes
to find a good quality captionist.

466
00:33:38,245 --> 00:33:42,985
And, just to let you know, captioning is not the same
as what they do in court.

467
00:33:42,985 --> 00:33:45,432
Court reporting.

468
00:33:45,432 --> 00:33:51,715
Court reporting is entirely different than captioning.

469
00:33:51,715 --> 00:33:56,583
So, in my experience, court reporters --

470
00:33:56,583 --> 00:34:00,312
using both court reporters and captionists --

471
00:34:00,312 --> 00:34:05,653
they're completely different.

472
00:34:05,653 --> 00:34:07,897
The training, I think, needs to be different.


473
00:34:07,897 --> 00:34:13,608
Those people who do captioning should be trained a different way for Deaf and hard of hearing people.

474
00:34:13,608 --> 00:34:24,428
I also know that Plover, when you use it,
you still have to have some training,


475
00:34:24,428 --> 00:34:25,667
to have some professional training.

476
00:34:25,831 --> 00:34:30,336
You shouldn't just have a person who, you know,
plays around with the program

477
00:34:30,486 --> 00:34:32,849
and then becomes a professional captionist.


478
00:34:32,849 --> 00:34:35,570
It's the same thing with interpreters.

479
00:34:35,570 --> 00:34:39,200
Just because someone knows sign language doesn't
mean that they would be a good-quality interpreter.

480
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:44,184
So I think it's important to note that to have
a good quality captionist that can work

481
00:34:44,184 --> 00:34:47,082
with Deaf and hard of hearing people,
they need to be professionally trained.

482
00:34:48,316 --> 00:34:50,917
MIRABAI: Can I just briefly respond,
really quickly?

483
00:34:50,917 --> 00:34:53,919
Yeah, absolutely agree.

484
00:34:53,919 --> 00:34:57,522
Of those 30,000 professional stenographers,

485
00:34:57,522 --> 00:35:01,328
only about 300 in the country are certified captioners,

486
00:35:01,328 --> 00:35:05,615
which I think is just staggering,
and it's very true that the skills are extremely different.

487
00:35:05,615 --> 00:35:11,396
So Plover is actually the only software
that's specifically designed for live captioning.

488
00:35:11,396 --> 00:35:13,007
It doesn't work with broadcast captioning.

489
00:35:13,007 --> 00:35:14,600
It doesn't work with court reporting.

490
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:16,549
Unlike every other proprietary software out there,

491
00:35:16,549 --> 00:35:18,521
which is specifically directed for court reporters.

492
00:35:18,521 --> 00:35:21,226
So, as a live captioner myself,

493
00:35:21,226 --> 00:35:28,518
I definitely want to sort of shepherd the potential captioning prodigies from trying steno out as an amateur,

494
00:35:28,518 --> 00:35:30,785
and learning through Plover,
to get up there,

495
00:35:30,785 --> 00:35:35,217
and then sort of giving them that final push
of captioning training, including ethics,

496
00:35:35,217 --> 00:35:37,146
including, you know, Deaf Culture,

497
00:35:37,146 --> 00:35:41,088
including all the sorts of things
that professional captioners need to know,

498
00:35:41,088 --> 00:35:43,991
that you can't get just as an an amateur,
playing around with the software.


499
00:35:43,991 --> 00:35:48,644
So I feel very passionately about that,
and I feel like it's really vital to preserving my own career,

500
00:35:48,644 --> 00:35:52,589
to help bring up the next generation of captioners via Plover.

501
00:35:54,298 --> 00:35:55,881
CAMERON: Great.

502
00:35:55,881 --> 00:35:58,857
Thank you so much, Hesky and Mirabai.

503
00:35:58,857 --> 00:36:00,172
Please, a round of applause.

504
00:36:00,172 --> 00:36:02,049
[ Applause ]

505
00:36:08,138 --> 00:36:12,580
CAMERON: Coming up, we're going to have
John Schimmel and DIYAbility crew

506
00:36:12,580 --> 00:36:19,169
talking about doing your own DIY hardware accessibility.

507
00:36:19,302 --> 00:36:21,363
So let's take five minutes.

508
00:36:21,498 --> 00:36:24,804
Introduce yourselves, please, 
chat amongst yourselves,

509
00:36:24,925 --> 00:36:29,726
and then we'll come back at 8:00
and pick up with John Schimmel.

510
00:36:29,726 --> 00:36:30,613
Thanks!