Cable station adds feature for hearing-impaired

Mansfield’s cable-access station has introduced an inexpensive means of adding captions for the hearing-impaired during broadcasts of Board of Selectmen meetings.

In the past, the Mansfield Cable Access Corp. had the option of providing captions during broadcasts of public meetings through a commercial service that charged $150 an hour – a price that, given the length of some meetings, could add up to $600 in a single evening, according to Jack O’Neill, the cable station’s director.

But after a Mansfield resident, Debbie O’Connell, offered to provide captioning for a flat fee of $150 per meeting, the cable station agreed to pay $7,500 for voice-recognition software and related technology, O’Neill said.

O’Connell views the meetings from her home and paraphrases what is being said into a microphone. The microphone is attached to a computer equipped with the voice-recognition software, which transmits the transcribed version of the comments via phone lines to the cable-station studio, where they instantly become part of the broadcast.

O’Neill said that it will take some time to perfect the system, which relies on O’Connell’s ability to quickly and precisely paraphrase what is being said. Part of the challenge, he added, is that people discussing an issue don’t always finish the sentences they begin, or complete their thoughts.

A Board of Selectmen agenda is sent ahead of time to O’Connell as a means of making it easier for her to dictate, for example, the number of a proposed Town Meeting warrant.

Mansfield Town Manager William Ross, who is legally blind in one eye, praised the cable station’s effort to serve the hearing-impaired.

“I’m very proud of the cable consortium for doing this,” Ross said. “And I see this as another example in Mansfield of what we’re trying to do to serve the community.”