Caroline Carswell's Story - Access to Historic Buildings
Channel: National Disability Authority
Date: 2012-06-01

This video was produced for the Access to Heritage Conference that took place on 30th May 2012 at the Law Society, Blackhall Place, Dublin 7. This conference was jointly hosted by the National Disability Authority and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The conference presentations can be found on the NDA website at http://www.nda.ie. The other videos in this set can be found by searching for the tag accesstoheritageconference2012. The transcript for this video is available below.

Caroline Carswell's story -- Access to Historic Buildings
My name's Caroline Carswell. I have a history degree from Trinity, so I have a natural interest in visiting historic places and finding out more about what happened there and the background to those places.    
There was one time I went to an exhibition in Dublin. Three of us were sitting in a dark room. And, I couldn't hear the soundtrack for the film part of the exhibition, so my friend was re-speaking as it went along -- but that means you get a summary and not a vision or verbatim of what was said and captioning in the first place would address that. And these days, you can bring film into YouTube or a similar captioning too... I'm hearing that (background noise)!
One area for improvement would be where buildings have indoor exhibits and outdoor exhibits. It seems to me that when you step outside, sometimes the level of information about the venue drops, or it's not as easy to find. So you could be wandering around the outdoor area needing more information and not being sure where to get it or how to get it. 
I mention loops systems, because they don't work for everybody. They work if you are hard of hearing. If you have a good level of hearing with or without hearing aids, but for people who are profoundly deaf, loop systems are not really that beneficial. It's hard to explain, because the same way we all have different eyesight -- it's the same for hearing, and one ear could be different to the other ear, the same way you have one stronger eye than the other. So it's important to make that point.
It is good to speak clearly at all times for lip-reading, and if there is background noise -- if you can move away from that maybe to a corner or even outside if you have to. And it helps if the venue -- say the seminar room, is sign-posted because you like to be independent and not having to ask the way everywhere. And it helps also, that - you know people might be lip-reading and to be prepared to write things down if they have difficulty communicating, because the majority of people will be able to read what's written down.