Access Granted:
The Unit That's Heard It All
Lauren Lee | July 1, 2025 - Atlanta, GA
Have you ever been at a loud bar or restaurant and wished you had captions to help you understand what’s being said?
Now imagine you’re a student who’s deaf or hard of hearing in a classroom, trying to understand the essential educational information being conveyed.
Helping Deaf and hard of hearing students succeed in the classroom is the core of the work of the Captioning and Described Media Services (C&DMS) unit at CIDI.
“A student who is Deaf or hard of hearing likely has already attempted education without accommodations, and they know the difficulties,” says Sheryl Ballenger, Ph.D. “We take very seriously the work we do”.
Ballenger manages the C&DMS unit. She began as a sign language interpreter and quickly advanced to a masters in Deaf Education and a doctorate in Adult Education. To her, educational access for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing is both a professional and personal passion.
“We also take very seriously access to media, and think all digital media must be accessible,” adds Chris Delano, Audio Description Coordinator. “I believe every student deserves access to education.”
Delano supervises the “described media” portion of C&DMS. Videos convey a huge amount of visual information that people with low or no vision simply miss. By adding audio descriptions, videos are made accessible.
C&DMS can also provide more traditional captions for educational videos, social media, e-learning platforms, broadcast TV, and more.
Digital Accessibility Specialist Ted Patterson emphasizes the importance of human-generated captions. "Especially in an educational setting, it's important for captions to be provided by an actual person, as auto-captions will often contain critical errors, thus providing misinformation to the student."
C&DMS is committed to providing excellent service at very reasonable rates. “We have a motto that says, ‘The class must go on’,” says Ballenger. “This means if one of our captioners experiences a technology failure, we have another at the ready.”
“As a non-profit entity, the cost of serving students is very minimal compared to for-profit captioning services,” she adds.
The C&DMS unit has heard it all—from university classes to graduations, from big corporate seminars to intimate nonprofit gatherings, and everything in between. The devotion of C&DMS to those with access needs, whether that be visual or auditory, remains the bedrock of CIDI’s mission of access for all.
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