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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until August 05, 2024

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The Invention of Access: Speech-to-Text Writing and the Emergent Methodologies of Disability Service Transcription

Iwertz, Chad Everett
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563383683005665

Abstract Details

2019, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
This dissertation investigates the writing practices of disability service transcribers, professional speech-to-text writers who translate sound into written text as a form of communication access. Scholars across the fields of disability studies, digital media studies, and communication studies have documented transcription as a complex rhetorical practice; however, the strategies speech-to-text writers use when composing in real-time environments, and the composing methodologies and technologies that underlie them, remain severely understudied. This lack of knowledge is significant because it constrains advocacy for disabled people and their allies in naming and understanding specific forms of real-time transcription that best increase access to spaces that depend upon sound to convey meaning. This lack also puts educators and their institutions at a disadvantage when working to make classrooms more accessible for disabled students, faculty, and staff. I intervene by applying a disability-studies lens to original composition-based research to ask: “How do different speech-to-text writers write, and why do they write the way they do?” To answer this question, this study is divided into two phases of qualitative and quantitative data collection: (1) a survey of speech-to-text writers working at a large, Midwestern university; and (2) a comparative survey of English-speaking speech-to-text writers across the United States and Canada. Collected qualitative data are coded and analyzed following Adele Clarke’s (2005) methods for situational analysis, and qualitative data are analyzed following Cindy Johanek’s (2000) adapted methodological model for mixed-methods research, also known as the “contextualist research paradigm” (p. 27). This study’s most important findings reveal several major methodologies of transcription are currently in practice among professionals, and their differences tend to be hotly contested. Data show a speech-to-text writer’s chosen methodology directly influences (1) significant changes in attunement to disabled people who rely on real-time transcription as a form of access, (2) a transcriber’s perceived professional and social value as someone who provides quality access to transcript readers, and (3) fierce social and material rifts among speech-to-text writers practicing one form of transcription over another. These findings are of significance to those who advocate for transcription as a form of access, as well as to professionals who practice transcription. For example, the Association of Transcribers and Speech-to-text Providers—an international organization of speech-to-text writers who practice an emergent form of transcription known as meaning-for-meaning transcription—has actively expressed interest in this study’s findings to help codify descriptive and performative standards for meaning-for-meaning transcription, which currently do not exist. This study also supports teachers, administrators, and institutions that seek to better support disabled people who use transcription as a form of communication access when learning and working in educational environments.
Margaret Price (Advisor)
Christa Teston (Committee Member)
Beverly Moss (Committee Member)
Sean Zdenek (Committee Member)
263 p.
Composition; Multicultural Education; Rhetoric; Technical Communication; Technology
composition studies; transcription studies; disability studies; rhetorical invention; grounded theory; qualitative analysis; quantitative analysis; caption studies; speech-to-text writing; methodologies of transcription

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Iwertz, C. E. (2019). The Invention of Access: Speech-to-Text Writing and the Emergent Methodologies of Disability Service Transcription [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563383683005665

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Iwertz, Chad. The Invention of Access: Speech-to-Text Writing and the Emergent Methodologies of Disability Service Transcription . 2019. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563383683005665.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Iwertz, Chad. "The Invention of Access: Speech-to-Text Writing and the Emergent Methodologies of Disability Service Transcription ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563383683005665

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1563383683005665
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.