Objective:
The Centre of Excellence has identified a number of barriers to learning faced by students who are deaf and hard of hearing in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, including a chronic shortage of Auslan-English interpreters – especially in regional and rural areas.

Building on earlier projects, research is being conducted in 2007 and 2008 to determine if Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) and Live Remote Captioning (LRC) can be used to improve access to VET for deaf and hard of hearing students, and to determine what is required to implement these services.
Methods:
A number of trials were conducted in both contrived and real learning environments in TAFE. Different technologies were evaluated with deaf and hard of hearing students, as well as interpreters, captioners and teachers.
Results:
As of April 2008, it appears that both LRC and VRI – with a number of caveats and conditions – are feasible for use in VET. Factors which influence the efficacy of VRI/LRC include the size of the group and amount of group discussion, environmental conditions, the speed and reliability of an internet connection and access to the required equipment. Early findings indicate that LRC also works best with students who have good English literacy.

A detailed appraisal of LRC and VRI in VET will be ready by December 2008, along with guidelines for their implementation.