Accessibility

[Deafcruise]

Hi,

 

We finally booked to sail on QV in May for 5 days to Hamburg which has two sea days. As I am Deaf I won’t be able to access to any of the lectures without captioning. 

 

They have agreed to provide 100 minutes internet data so I can use my device for live captioning. However, seeing that it is only means 1 hour and 40 minutes for the entire trip.

 

How long does the lectures takes and how many per day as I do not want to pick and choose which due to minutes. They said if I need more then I have to buy them. I am not entirely comfortable that they are making a ‘profit’ from my ‘disability’ as others who attend lectures do not require to spend money whereas as I am Deaf I do need to spend money to have the same access as others.

 

Its my first sailing with them and I am already feeling bit disappointed.

 

Any advice?

[Pushpit]

Insight lectures usually take 45 to 50 minutes. On HAM shuttles you may get 3 lectures on the sea days, two in the morning and one around midday or 1pm.

 

Does your device have captioning from the microphone? So you can go along to the theatre and just read your device captioning? I don't think you can route the lecture to your device, merely tune in to the TV channel.

 

First time around there is also 1 free hour of WiFi plus you can share another person's WiFi, you can't both be online at the same time unless doing something like hotspotting or Bluetooth.

Edited January 22 by Pushpit

[Deafcruise]

6 minutes ago, Pushpit said:

Insight lectures usually take 45 to 50 minutes. On HAM shuttles you may get 3 lectures on the sea days, two in the morning and one around midday or 1pm.

 

Does your device have captioning from the microphone? So you can go along to the theatre and just read your device captioning? I don't think you can route the lecture to your device, merely tune in to the TV channel.

Thanks yes I am planning to use my device microphone to read captions which I need data access hence asking for an access to internet.

Edited January 22 by Deafcruise

[Pushpit]

I wonder if the Purser Desk may offer more leeway than 100 minutes. But the Essentials package is $24 for 24 hours, it sounds like it would enhance your stay such as the evening entertainment. So leaving the principles to one side, I think it would be worth budgeting for it. They only slow down streaming on Essentials and a mix of VPN and Incognito gets around that issue.

[Deafcruise]

10 minutes ago, Pushpit said:

I wonder if the Purser Desk may offer more leeway than 100 minutes. But the Essentials package is $24 for 24 hours, it sounds like it would enhance your stay such as the evening entertainment. So leaving the principles to one side, I think it would be worth budgeting for it. They only slow down streaming on Essentials and a mix of VPN and Incognito gets around that issue.

Thanks, something for me to look into.

 

I am not sure what VPN does in terms of cruise. If you wont mind sharing your thoughts on this as they do have a Shakespeare production which I would love to see but not sure if the live captioning will cope.

 

Just have to book more spa days then!

[Pushpit]

So there are two Wifi offers, Premium and Essential. Premium is intended for those who want to stream, and when I checked it out on QV and QM2, they seem to both have the same upload and download speed, same ping latency. But on Essential there was a definite speed reduction if you used something like Youtube. It seemed that they were using some sort of IP port analysis to decide whether to slow down the speed, since things like photo uploads and downloads were not affected by this slowdown. I also downloaded my newspaper on Essentials and it took just a few seconds despite being a  very large file. But on Essentials if you went VPN and Incognito then presumably the Carnival servers don't actually know what you are doing with the bandwidth and hence Essential was the same speed on Youtube as Premium.

 

Now I'm guessing your captioning software isn't on the list of sites/apps to slow down, so it may be that using Essential will do the trick perfectly well. But if you feel like you are wading through treacle, before upgrading to Premium you could try VPN (and Incognito if it's web-based software). If you buy the Essentials package then there's a screen that allows you to upgrade to Premium, which is costed at the original differential, so it doesn't cost more doing it in that order.

[Deafcruise]

20 minutes ago, Pushpit said:

So there are two Wifi offers, Premium and Essential. Premium is intended for those who want to stream, and when I checked it out on QV and QM2, they seem to both have the same upload and download speed, same ping latency. But on Essential there was a definite speed reduction if you used something like Youtube. It seemed that they were using some sort of IP port analysis to decide whether to slow down the speed, since things like photo uploads and downloads were not affected by this slowdown. I also downloaded my newspaper on Essentials and it took just a few seconds despite being a  very large file. But on Essentials if you went VPN and Incognito then presumably the Carnival servers don't actually know what you are doing with the bandwidth and hence Essential was the same speed on Youtube as Premium.

 

Now I'm guessing your captioning software isn't on the list of sites/apps to slow down, so it may be that using Essential will do the trick perfectly well. But if you feel like you are wading through treacle, before upgrading to Premium you could try VPN (and Incognito if it's web-based software). If you buy the Essentials package then there's a screen that allows you to upgrade to Premium, which is costed at the original differential, so it doesn't cost more doing it in that order.

Thank you!