How to do a conference call alongside hearing people

[mchua]

Situation: Mel is in a conference call, and (hearing) colleagues are beside her calling someone(s) remote.

Case study: Stephanie Cutler on one side, and Alexandra Strong and Mel on the other. AWKWARDNESS ENSUES. Alexandra and Stephanie have a phone call between them, and Mel has VCO open in the same room as Alexandra.

• need to explain to terp that no, there's a third person who's not in the room, I'm not using VR to call someone sitting next to me (that's not allowed)
• audio doubling issues; Mel and Alexandra have double mics and audio outputs on their side now, and need to engage in fun strategic muting dances with the terp
• timing of dialogue pauses totally unclear without visuals

[nicetoknowyou]

Before 10/30 need

[nicetoknowyou]

ARGOSY - We rock! 10/30

[mchua]

Yep. Apparently, solution is both CART + terping for the win, because in-room convos happen before and after the call that Mel would otherwise miss, and Mel can do good things with transcripts immediately after the event, and chat backchannel works well with Lynn (who was remote that round).

We now have our ideal setup. (A lot of these ideal setups involve Brittany being magic.)

Less ideal setup: just terping, b/c Mel can then understand stuff and respond to it, but can't really write notes down at the same time (and is distinctly at a disadvantage, whereas CART transcripts let her make up for a lot of it in other ways).

Alternative less ideal setup: just CART, because then Mel can write notes, but is at a lag, and never gets to speak.

Really not ideal but barely survivable setup: VRS/VCO, with lots of patience and adjustment needed from the hearing parties in the conversation. (Above options require almost no adjustment from other people.)

All of these things are infinitely better than things that are NOT viable solutions for this space -- Relay (like Sprint), or generic captioning (like Hamilton CapTel), because they... can't keep up with super-important convos like this in terms of accuracy, lag, contextual familiarity, etc. Mel can totally use those services to order pizza and book hotel rooms, but... not for this.