2학기 개강하는 온라인 수업.. 청각 장애인들 "1학기 악몽 되풀이되나"

Fall classes for college students begin tomorrow in South Korea... but online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Although many students have taken to online lectures as an alternative, for some, they aren't a viable option.
Our Kim Yeon-seung tells us how learning is especially difficult for those with hearing impairments in times of a pandemic.
When school starts, graduate school student Ho Ye-won will sit in front of the screen for online courses.
She has a hearing impediment, but her condition doesn't dampen her enthusiasm to learn.
What does stand in her way is the lack of service offered to hearing-impaired students.
"Many schools don't have services like sign language or text translation so students just sit in front of the screen wasting time and money."
During the first semester, many students with hearing difficulties struggled to follow online lectures.
The students couldn't read the lips of the professors and they could barely hear anything over the machine sound of the computer.
Schools did little to help.
So, in March and April, Ho Ye-won raised this issue in front of the Blue House.
"It has become much harder for hearing-impaired students to learn and access information due to COVID-19."
Schools still do not have many professionals to translate, so translations often lack expertise and accuracy.
"During the first semester, a student worker had to translate for me, so it wasn't very accurate and difficult to understand."
We talked to Sungkyunkwan University's Center for the Disabled to ask them how they were helping the six hearing-impaired students on campus.
"We try to hire a text-translator that knows the student's major well. This semester, we are trying to provide transparent masks for professors so the students can read lips."
While some universities do have high-quality welfare services for the hearing impaired, most need to do more to hear the desperate calls for help.
Kim Yeon-seung, Arirang News