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| Harjot Atwal |
This may sound pretty obvious to say, but it’s really hard to respect everyone’s differences. I feel like diversity is ever-increasing, which makes meaningful inclusivity of the “many different groups” harder and harder. People much smarter than me (such as the former chief justice I have quoted from her article here) have certainly given much greater thought to how to “accomodate[e] rather than subordinat[e]” these groups.
I just had a simple thought. It’s about a free technology that could help the hearing-impaired and deaf communities achieve more meaningful inclusivity with respect to continuing professional development (CPD) programs. I was a disability law research assistant in law school, and I volunteered for six summers at a hospital for children with disabilities, so I like to think about accommodations for persons with disabilities from time to time.
First, a little bit of history about a different kind of accommodation with respect to recorded educational materials. Back when I attended Osgoode Hall Law School from 2010 to 2014, it was the only law school in Ontario that provided lecture recordings. The professors used this software called Camtasia, it would record anything that was on the screen in the classroom (like lecture slides), and the professor’s voice would simultaneously be recorded on top as the lecture proceeded and the slides changed.
I thought it was a really great technology. Its use was borne out of the H1N1 pandemic that occurred during the 2008-09 academic year, in order to discourage students who were symptomatic from attending classes. Professors experienced difficulties consistently using the technology (given the myriad of other responsibilities they have to attend to in order to start and teach each class), and I unsuccessfully launched a mini-campaign to promote a solution (see my 2013 article here) whereby students would help the professors set up the lecture recording software 10 minutes before class. I think the student government also tried to enact a similar solution as well.
Due to my anxiety and depression, I had difficulty attending classes in person a lot; some classes were not consistently recorded, so I missed a bunch of stuff, and I thought this solution could benefit other people as well (e.g., students who had family obligations related to taking care of young children or older, sick loved ones).
Nowadays, I am pretty sure it is commonplace that everything gets recorded. After all, necessity is the mother of invention, so I’m pretty sure the COVID-19 pandemic would have required everyone to double down and figure out the technology on a deeper level if the entire student body required accommodation (rather than just a smaller group). I don’t really have a way of proving that. It’s just an educated guess.
Why do I mention this? Well, for instance, if you view LAWPRO’s CPD here, you will notice everything is posted to YouTube. Now, YouTube automatically creates subtitles. When I realized the usefulness of this last year, you could actually download all of the subtitles as a transcript directly from YouTube. It seems this feature has now been removed from YouTube, but you can still generate a transcript of YouTube videos using this website.
There are lots of spelling errors, of course, as it appears the subtitles are auto-generated. But, if you’re a real keener, you could copy and paste the transcript into a Microsoft Word document and then start editing it into a sort of makeshift law school-esque summary as the presenters were speaking (particularly if you found the content very valuable, as I tried to do for some of the real estate programs at times).
However, I doubt that all CPD provided by different companies comes with subtitles. Here comes my simple thought: What if you are hearing-impaired or belong to the deaf community? Without subtitles, how are you going to meaningfully engage with the presenters’ lectures and speeches?
After all, according to the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS), based out of the United Kingdom, “It's estimated that only 30 per cent to 40 per cent of speech sounds can be lip-read even under the best conditions. A deaf person will usually need extra information to understand what’s being said.”
Now, there may be some sort of accommodation already in place for this “smaller group.” I don’t know. I just thought that if there is an existing free technology like YouTube that can provide the “extra information” that a deaf person would require to understand what’s being said, then why not use it? After all, it’s not like the technology needs to be upgraded by paying $7 million or something (as I had mentioned in my 2013 article linked above regarding the lecture recording software).
Of course, there are always the written materials that come along with the verbal presentations, which may provide a reasonable accommodation and be a sufficient way of engaging with CPD information being shared for improving our respective legal practices (and guarding against potential mistakes).
But, I don’t think it would be an “undue hardship” to provide subtitles with each CPD program, as the standard of accommodation is set out in Ontario’s Human Rights Code. Other people who would benefit would be those with auditory processing disorders (APD). These disorders cause disruptions in the way a person’s brain understands what they are hearing. While someone with APD does not have hearing loss, they still have difficulty with hearing-related tasks, such as listening to and understanding speakers’ presentations during a CPD program.
Again, I’m no expert, but I don’t think the same kind of necessity as a pandemic or two is ever going to apply to make subtitles the norm for CPD programs. There’s also the issue that while LAWPRO’s CPD is free, other companies want to charge fees for their CPD and, thus, wouldn’t want to use YouTube, per se. But, since the former chief justice said we should respect differences, I just thought I would add my two cents.
Harjot Atwal is a real estate lawyer. In 2023, he opened up his own shop, Atwal Law Firm. You can reach him via email at harjot@atwallawfirm.ca, by phone at 905-264-8926 or on LinkedIn.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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