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A morning in the life of a CART writer

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CART : Communication Access Real-Time Translation. Known as Speech-To-Text in the UK. 

First off, hello. My name is Jenn Porto. I’ve been a CART writer for approximately 7 years. My purpose is to share my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants situations that I encounter on the job. This post doesn’t make me an expert and does not mean that I’ll always make the right decisions. I may say/do something that makes you wince. I’m okay with that. There is no rule book for being a CART writer, and because we work “alone” on the job, we rarely get to share these moments and get POSITIVE feedback. With that said, I am not always going to be grammatically correct according to Morson’s English Guide. This is an account of my day and my thoughts as they come to mind.

August 13, 2014
Where’s my Advil! I left my house at 8 a.m. for a 10 a.m. job with only 27 miles to drive. You do the math. Welcome to the evil beast we call the “Los Angeles freeways.” It’s a good thing I left so early! Full of anxiety, I exited the freeway at 9:27. Every thought I had was followed by, “I should be setting up by now!”

“There’s my parking structure!!!” Shoot, a line! There’s a gigantic sign that reads: Government vehicles only. “Well, this could be a problem.” Rechecking the agency’s instructions, I confirm that I’m at the correct structure. I see a metered spot on the street open. “Great! Well, that never happens in LA.” Get that spot! Shoot, I can’t make a U-turn because I’m surrounded by government buildings and every police car in the city is lurking about. Quickly pulling out of the line, merging three lanes over to the turn lane, squeezing behind a postal truck, turn, turn, legal U-turn, swoosh into my parking spot. I jumped out and rush to the meter and, “Curses! The meter is broken!” This explains why the spot was open. I can’t risk a parking ticket. I get back in my car and back to the darn structure and darn line. Third in line.

9:35’ish, “Hi. Jennifer Porto. Here for the City Planning meeting.”
With a heavy accent, the parking attendant responds, “City Plant.”
“Ummmm, yup.” WTH is City Plant? Don’t know. Don’t care. “Thank you.” Off I go down the rabbit hole to the basement of the structure. Park. Pulling out my Stenograph bag, bag with monitor, Tory Burch grown-up high heels, and away I go hustling through the garage to find the elevator. I’ve gotten lost every time I’ve parked in this labyrinth of cars, so I was relieved to see a businessman making the same mad dash I was. “Follow him.”

9:45, 15 minutes to go. Up the elevator. Press the third-floor button with authority as if to urge this toaster on pulleys to move faster. “It’s so hot in this elevator. Where is my rubber band? Screw my bouncy curls. This is what being in a toaster feels like! Focus, Jennifer.” Doors open. I’m out. Turn left, right, through the bridge connecting the buildings. “Crap, I don’t have time for a metal detector.” Slap my bags down on the table and wait patiently for the guard to look up from his phone. Now, one would think that since I’m in the building, things would start to get easy — WRONG!

9:50, 10 minutes to go. I found the correct room and tried to slip unnoticed through the door with my hands full of Stenograph luggage — not happening. Bang, bonk, bang. “Sorry.” I sit in the back and scan the room for my client. He’s not here. “Will I get lucky and he’s a no-show?” Fingers crossed!

10:00, go time. The client is still not here. I had set up my equipment in the back of the room taking up three empty seats. There was a pole blocking my view of the board members. Don’t care. My setup includes a Mira, Dell laptop that sits on a laptop stand, and an extra monitor set up next to me. Everything is plugged in. “Boo-ya, I’m ready to start!” No need to Duct take wires down to the carpet at this point; the power plug was right behind my chair. With a second to breathe, I casually walked to the side of the room to gather the board member’s names. I usually get prep before meetings, but not this time.

10:15, still no client. I’m double stroking the board member’s names to make my speaker ID’s. SKWREUPL/SKRWEUPL = JIM:. The door opens slightly and I can see my client. “Hmmm, why is he not coming in?” So it turns out that he had requested a sign language interpreter to voice for him, and for the third time an interpreter did not show up. I offered to voice for the client, as I’ve done with this client in the past. He types what he wants to say and I verbalize his text. It’s usually not a problem — usually.

10:20, the planning administrator now tells me with a pleading look in his eye, “I know you’re set up in this room, but we’re moving to room 1060. Okay?”

With a smile and nod, “You got it. Let me gather my stuff.”

With a double step, I gracefully bust through the door. I breakdown my setup, clink, bonk, stuff in bag, click, clink. Mira and tripod, laptop lid shut, laptop stand and tripod, pen and pad all get placed in my bag — let’s be real, thrown in my bag – monitor is in a separate bag. I’m out! “Really!? Of course 1060 is on the opposite side of the floor, of course it is!”

Setting up for the second time, I finally sit next to my client and prepare to start. Nope, he doesn’t like my font. He is not verbal, so he writes me a note: Separate font. Crap, I don’t know what he means. I’m already double spaced. I motion to him with my fingers: Bigger? Smaller? He nods on bigger. Okay, I use CaseCat software. I have about 30+ different templates of different sizes and fonts to switch to. I switch to Arial 26. I write, “Test test.” Nope, he says something that I don’t understand. I changed my template randomly to find one he liked. Verdana 15? Nope. This happens at least five more times. Oh, and the planning administrator is sitting with his face in his palm looking from me to his paperwork, to me, to his paperwork, and now to me! Finally, the client mutters something that I understand, “The original.” Back to Arial 26.

10:26, and we’re off. My fingers were shaky from the anxiety of the morning. I kept mixing up the speakers every time they would switch. Which one is he? Ben? No, Jim? No, Ben? NO! It’s Jim! “Get it together.” I couldn’t remember my brief for applicant or advisement. My pink blouse is now stuck to my back. I am sure I had the just-woken-up look with makeup under my eyes and a droopy ponytail. I was focused, “Write every word perfectly. No misstrokes.” The client was glued to my screen.

The planning administrator finally opened the forum for public comment. My client was reading every word I wrote. “Does anyone wish to make public comments?” After a long pause while he was reading, he shoots his hand up. Now comes the dance as we attempt to take turns with my laptop. He would be furiously pecking away to write his comments and the board members would start talking. Although, I couldn’t write what they were saying while my client was typing, because the real time would switch to the bottom of the screen and the client’s thought would be lost. I raised my hand to gesture a “pause.” I waited for my client to finish typing his response. Then I wrote what the board said. Then voiced what my client typed out. It was confusing. Thankfully, my client kept reiterating the same thing: He wanted a postponement due to not having a sign language interpreter.

One last thought, this was the third time a sign language interpreter did not show up and did not give notice. This is now three times a planning hearing for this matter has been set up a month out, the representatives from a HUGE well-known company have come prepared with experts and strategy, the planning administrator has conducted and postponed a planning hearing, a CART provider has been arranged, and the client shows up to debate this matter. How is it that a sign language agency has screwed up three times and not sent out an interpreter nor arranged a sub? Baffles my mind. Crap does happen, you get a sub, and you get the job done! Period! This is not a job where you can be lackadaisical and call out sick without arranging a sub. Please let this be a lesson to all of us: Get a sub. Oh, and leave your house more than two hours early, if you are driving on the beastly LA freeways, ha!

10:46, we adjourned.

Source: Jenn Porto

Let’s talk : Respeaking

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Do you think subtitles on TV have gotten worse? Say hello to respeaking.

What is respeaking?

A respeaker (or voice writer) uses a mask or speech silencer to repeat what they hear into their computer, which uses voice recognition software to translate speech into text.

respeaker

Image: www.gccra.org

The people providing live subtitling for television are called captioners. If they use voice recognition they are respeakers. In the UK, respeaking is only used in live captioning, it’s not usually used with deaf people.

Speech-to-Text Reporters (STTRs) are called CART Providers in the USA, or stenographers. They use verbatim shorthand machines which have been around for over 20 years in the UK so they have always been a profession in their own right. The spoken language is not modified in any way, what appears on the screen is exactly what is spoken and this relies on the shorthand skills of the Verbatim Speech-to-Text Reporter.

Respeaking is relatively new in the UK and is seen as something completely different due to the very different skills involved.

The qualification exam to become an STTR is only open to people able to write verbatim shorthand at 180 wpm. In the US, certification is at 225 wpm.

Respeaking is a very different skill: you need to talk fast and very accurately, and know a lot about speech recognition software. The most training time is spent on

  • How fast can you talk before recognition errors occur
  • How can you speak very precisely, even in fast talking
  • How can you achieve the ability to listen, respeak, reread what the computer writes and correct it by hand – all nearly simultaneously.

The BBC used to pay stenographers to write the live subtitles for TV programmes. To cut costs, they started using respeakers. What is the difference between a stenographer and a respeaker? What are the issues a consumer should be thinking about when deciding which to use? We spoke to Voice4Me*, a large provider of respeakers, to find out more.

  • SPEED

A stenographer can write up to 350 words a minute and speed can be an issue for respeakers.

  • HEALTH & SAFETY

Respeakers are advised to only do 15-minute stints for up to two hours of work as it can damage vocal chords to do any more.  How can their voice maintain quality? This has been researched extensively by Voice4Me who have been training and providing respeakers for many years.

Voice4Me only has four out of a team of over 20 who can get 98.5% on regular political TV programmes. They wouldn’t get that on a programme that would be more ad hoc and without much prep. It is not possible to respeak constantly over a two hour period or a whole day, and maintain voice quality. Voice4Me found that the quality drops as the stints get longer. They may claim to be better and to do everything, but the evidence isn’t there.

  • ACCURACY

Not everyone can walk off the street and be a good respeaker. Voice4Me have stretched the boundaries and still find the service wanting.  They have had varying degrees of success with their staff, who are very familiar with the industry and the requirements of a deaf audience. Their respeakers are highly trained and are only required to make 97% accuracy. On rolling news, they don’t give them a content/contextual percentage as this accuracy level would drop again. Stenographers are required to hit 99% accuracy and 98% content.  Only a handful of respeakers can hit 98% and aways on familiar content, and very very few are verbatim.

What is the difference between 97% and 99% accuracy? It is the difference between stenographic captions and TV subtitles. It’s a big difference. It doesn’t sound a lot but it is. Respeakers don’t all hit the target of 97%; they are supposed to. That isn’t contextual accuracy. That’s just what they get down – the content. STTRs have a contextual accuracy requirement so they have to get everything down – and hit the accuracy level of 99% as well. Voice4Me recognise the differences in skills and their respeakers are better trained than any other.  And that is only 15 minutes worth.

In the UK and the USA, stenographers have to be able to write verbatim. This is not the case in Europe. A stenographer will include information such as laughter, applause, and colloquies. In the UK, speech to text reporters are required to have a minimum of 180 words per minute (wpm) with a syllabic density of 2.4. In reality, they have to write a lot faster than that to be verbatim, generally over 200wpm. 180wpm is the entry level.

Many stenographer clients would not accept the accuracy levels of respeakers. Clients often want the verbatim nature of speech-to-text. The danger is you are paying for a service that won’t meet your needs, so why pay for it at all?

  • PREPARATION

Preparation prior to a job is very important and affects accuracy. Preparation time and material for respeakers is much longer and more important than for stenographers.  Most respeaking jobs don’t provide either.

  • FLEXIBILITY AND ADAPTABILITY

There are some great respeakers doing subtitles but they have been specially trained and have been working in the same environment every day for years – not the varied situations stenographers find themselves in. There is a long way to go and respeakers are not the next new thing.  They won’t be able to handle the long hours or full days that stenographers do, nor the varied content.

In the UK, respeakers cannot work onsite, they only work remotely. To work onsite, they would need to work in an interpreter’s booth and the audio is piped in, which is not generally available in the UK. Onsite, they can use a special mask to speak into, which softens their voice, however this can still be disruptive. Clients want a discreet service, which will move with them from meeting to meeting, with no fuss.

  • COST EFFECTIVENESS

A stenographer is more cost effective as they can work on their own, whereas two respeakers are required to do the same job, so it costs more for the consumer. Voice4Me’s respeakers do other subtitling work, which is where the value is found in the employee. Respeakers can’t do the volume of output that a stenographer can, and that is what separates them. You need two respeakers to do what a stenographer does, which makes a stenographer cheaper.

  • STANDARDS

There are a few really good respeakers out there but there are many that are not so good. They are also mostly experienced subtitlers so they know and understand the material they are doing really well – such as the news on television.  The sound they receive is excellent quality and even the shows they don’t have prep for, they know them well, and will have worked on them before.  Voice4Me invested heavily in respeaking, with varied success. They had high quality subtitlers at 99% and now have settled at 97% for respeakers. They have never had so many complaints, and are under huge pressure from deaf groups. People want quality.

Membership of a national register is important because service providers would sign up to a Code of Practice that includes a code of conduct such as;

You shall do no harm, and you will not bring your profession into disrepute.

All registered Communication Professionals in the UK are required to provide an enhanced disclosure and barring service (DBS) check and evidence of valid personal indemnity insurance.  This will cover them for a complaints procedure, which protects both themselves, the person who books them, and the client. They are required to carry out Continuing Professional Development on an annual basis as a condition of their registration.

In contrast, with respeaking, there is no real quality benchmark. Professor Romero Fresco’s EU standards are only reliable in the Spanish language. There is no guarantee of quality with the respeaker that you get, no guarantee of personal indemnity insurance, no CPD, no redress for complaints.

  • TRAINING

To train as a STTR or CART writer, a person would first train as a court reporter. A court reporter using a steno machine could train to be a respeaker in 6 months. Anyone training as a respeaker can learn to use the basic equipment (instead of the newest technologies) in 6 – 8 months. Full training can be completed in one year. Learning the process is not sufficient to reach a working standard; the respeaker must practice and become proficient as well, which takes around 6 months.

  • CHALLENGES

The challenges of remote work are usually sound quality and lack of preparation material. Consumers tend to give you fewer breaks as they can’t see the writer.  All of these things don’t work well for respeaking. The health and safety aspect was extensively researched by Voice4Me, which means anything more than 15 minutes of respeaking solid text without a break will result in damage to the voice, and also a drop in quality.

Voice4Me has invested a huge amount of money and effort into respeaking. They have in hindsight agreed they should have invested in stenography training but they have invested so much money already, and everything is built around it, so they continue.  Their respeakers do lots of other things, not just respeaking, so they are multi skilled and therefore cost effective. Voice4Me has recently taken back on several stenographers as freelancers – who could work day and night for them if they wanted to.

Respeaking works well in captioning because of the nature of the work.  The stenographer can work remotely and it’s everything and anything with no prep, bad sound, people mumbling etc etc. Respeakers will be talking and listening, with no breaks. Respeaking is not as skilled a job as speech-to-text or captioning. Like remote speech-to-text, respeaking doesn’t work for every situation and for everyone. Respeakers do not earn as much as stenographers because there is a recognised difference in skills and productivity. If you adhere to health and safety requirements, you need two to three respeakers to do the same job as one stenographer, so are you really saving money? The common goal of all systems is to transform speech to text in (near) realtime and with a high quality of service.

Respeaking might be useful for the educational market. They do have a place in the market in certain situations and with co-working, but they certainly are not at a point where they will be a like for like replacement for stenographers.  Consumers will have to decide if a cheaper price is more important than quality issues – and that is their choice.

* Names changed to protect privacy

Captioning – on a bus!

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captioning

Have you ever seen captioning on a bus?

Our captioner Michelle tells us about a day in her life, captioning for everyone around her ….

We all know that every day in the working life of a captioner is different, and can be a challenge, and then there are days like Tuesday 26th November!

It began like any other day, with a booking for a regular client at a conference they were holding to discuss accessible tourism in Ireland, interesting! But then I was told we wouldn’t be needed till after lunch as the morning was being spent on an ‘accessible bus tour’ to some of the accessible sights of Dublin…hold on a minute though, if I’m there for access for the deaf/hard of hearing tourists, and I’m not needed, then how accessible is this tour going to be for them? So I asked how they’d feel if we tried to make the tour bus accessible? Without hesitation, we got a resounding yes – if you can do it, let’s go!

On the morning of the job I arrived at their office with laptops, screens, projectors, extension cables etc, I could see the perplexed expressions as they tried to work out how best to explain to me that they wouldn’t be able to plug in my extension lead on the bus, or indeed my projector! But once they were confident that that wasn’t my intention, and that I did really have some clue about what we were about to embark on, everyone relaxed 🙂

And I have to say, it was by far the most fun job I’ve done. Three double-decker Dublin buses pulled up outside the office, everyone was given a name tag and allocated a bus. The idea was that as the buses travelled between destinations the facilitator would lead the discussion and debate onboard and then in the afternoon all three busloads would feed back their information to the group at large.

As our bus was now equipped with live captioning (CART – Communication Access Realtime Translation), the occupants of the other buses could see what we were discussing, or joking about! The tour very quickly descended into a school tour mentality (we were even given some snacks) with lots of good natured joking, and one of our blind facilitators even scolded me for shielding my screen from him which meant he couldn’t copy my answers to the quiz 🙂

It soon became apparent that our driver was quite new to the concept of braking in a timely fashion and had probably never passed a pothole he didn’t enter! This being the case, I was finding it increasingly difficult to stay upright myself, and my machine, so with that in mind, the guys and gals on our bus decided to take bets on when the next bump in the road, traffic light etc would cause me and/or my machine to slip! It really lightened the mood, everyone had a laugh and it brought home to people in a very real and tangible way, that accessibility for everyone is not just a soapbox topic – but it became something that everyone on our bus played an active part in (even if some of them were “accidentally” bumping into me to get an untranslated word, and a laugh). But it showed that access matters, and that it should matter to us all!

What I didn’t know before that morning was that not only were we doing a tour on the bus, but we also had two stops; one at a brand new and very accessible hotel and one at a greyhound race track. Initially it was suggested that I would stay on the bus and not transcribe the tours, but where’s the fun in that? So, once we got off the bus, the bets turned to how many different positions they could get me to write in; standing; sitting; balancing on a bed; squatting; machine on a table, machine held by another tour member in the lift! – it was a truly interactive tour 🙂

And to finish the day off we went back to Guinness Storehouse for our panel discussion and debate about accessible tourism in Ireland (and free pints of Guinness of course).

All in all a brilliant day. An important topic discussed, debated, delivered and demonstrated in our different locations – the best job ever 🙂

captioning

CART services

CART services for the Emergency Services

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Demonstration of CART services

We are being kept busy with conferences, exhibitions, and trade shows. This week – on the same day! – our team exhibited at the Deaf Unity 2013 Deaf Learner’s conference and at the first Deaf Awareness Day in Hertfordshire. In Hertfordshire, one of our captioners, Orla, captioned the day’s presentations. She explained how she writes what she hears in shorthand into her steno machine, then her laptop converts this into English. Orla’s captions were streamed to a large screen for everyone to read. She also gave a demonstration of remote captioning CART services on her iPad – the latest in CART technology. CART is Communication Access Realtime Translation, a verbatim capture of what is said in real time.

CART services

Steno machine

Contact us to find out how you can have realtime captions streamed to you anytime, anywhere. Our captioners reporters are NRCPD and NCRA registered, providing high quality captions with no droppage of service. We offer the highest quality remote CART services in the UK.

A delegate’s thoughts

On Tuesday 28th May I went to a Deaf Awareness day organised by Hertfordshire County Council. The police and the fire brigade both gave presentations, as did several senior members of the council’s Social Services department. I am a Police Community Volunteer with Hertfordshire Police, so I was sitting at a table with 5 police officers. I was wearing a black suit to try and blend in with their uniforms and it was surprising the number of people who took it for granted I’d be a police officer rather than a deaf volunteer! It was a very wet day but it was a well attended day with deaf people, and those working with them, present.

There were lots of displays for all sorts of deaf charities. I was delighted to see a table with leaflets about CART services and had a chat with the smartly dressed lady running it, Orla from 121 Captions. Orla captioned the presentations and gave a very professional and competent service with the minimum of errors. Many people at the event were very interested in what she was doing because they hadn’t seen CART services before. I would certainly seek out 121 Captions again if looking for captioning services.

Delegate, Deaf Awareness Day, Hertfordshire