Today, Microsoft announced a partnership with the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), which has piloted the use of Microsoft Translator language technology to help students who are deaf and hard of hearing feel more engaged by transcribing lectures in real time.
[Adapting to the New Classroom]
RIT is home to one of the largest academic programs for its deaf and hard of hearing community (roughly 10 percent of its 15,000 enrolled students) and employs the largest staff of interpreters and captioning professionals of any college in the world. However, not all students that are deaf or hard of hearing are able to interpret sign language, and some struggle to follow the lesson when watching the interpreter, taking notes and following the lecture all at once. To remedy this, RIT’s Center on Access Technology initiated a pilot program that leverages intelligent technology built around Microsoft Translator to transcribe a presenter’s spoken words and display them onscreen as text captions in real-time, and in a language of their choice on a personal device.
To learn more, visit the Microsoft AI Blog.
