New System to Aid Deaf CSUN Students
Hearing-impaired students at Cal State Northridge can now obtain computer printouts of lectures and class discussions.
Offered by the school’s National Center on Deafness, the C-Print system was introduced last fall, said center director Merri Pearson.
During class, hearing-impaired students watch a computer monitor that displays text of the lectures and classroom discussions, which can later be printed out, Pearson said.
The texts are superior to those of a note taker or offered through real-time captioning, where every word or sound an instructor utters is included, she said.
“C-Print is an abbreviated system, which means all the extraneous information is left out,” Pearson said. “If a professor repeats something, if he gets distracted in mid-sentence, they won’t print that.”
C-Print is free to the nearly 250 hearing-impaired students at CSUN. Currently, from 20 to 50 students are using the system in 25 classes, Pearson said.
The system was developed at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, N.Y.
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