Last Thursday was a university-wide Research Day where they invite various PhD students and academics are invited to present their research to others within the university. There were some fascinating ideas and advances being made in areas I wasn’t even aware of, but the lack of audience at some talks made me feel a bit weird for being even that little more adventurous.
But the day itself also reminded me of my regular habit of consciously choosing a seat as I walk into a room to optimise for my hearing loss and reliance on Google Live Transcribe on my phone for captions, so I thought I’d write down this process so others could understand.
One might ask “Shouldn’t these events ideally be accessible without any effort on my part?” and my answer is that it’s simply not practical. In this kind of scenario it’s typical to have ~90 minute block sessions where each speaker only has 10-15 minutes plus 5 minutes Q&A, so it’s quite impractical (especially without an conscious extra person) to outfit every new speaker with the lapel mic every time. There are also hand-held microphones available, but in general one can rarely expect academics or research students to be cognizant of anything besides their own research, let alone the audio facilities available in every tutorial room and lecture theatre.
Below is one arrangement in a large tutorial room, and assuming I’m first to walk into the room and choose my ideal seat, you can see which ones I consider most ideal.
Noting that I’m deaf in my right ear and wear a hearing aid on my left, it follows that I would ideally seat myself not just close to the speaker, but also such that anything I perceive is in front of me, or to my left, but never to my right. Visually, I would like to also be able to perceive both speaker and what’s being shown on the screen in a single field of vision i.e. not have to move my eyes back and forth.
At the same time, I turn on Google’s Live Transcribe on my phone for captions, so it makes sense that I would need to be close enough to the speaker for my phone to pick up enough audio to properly transcribe what’s being said.
Obviously my preference will change for larger lecture theatres, tutorial rooms with different seating layouts, and whether there are people already seated (i.e. what’s the next best option?), but hopefully this gives a small insight into how I think. If you’re ever around me in person I’m always happy to explain my thought process.
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