By Amy Doman
As the first recipient of the Court to CART Grant from the National Court Reporters Foundation (NCRF), I am happy to report I finished the training! The people involved with this grant have generously shared their time and talent with me, and I know much more about the realm of CART captioning than I did when I first applied for the grant.
As a freelance stenographer doing court and corporate work for the last 34 years, I have always admired the abilities captioners possess to write for people with hearing loss. As I have been learning about the challenges in the CART captioning world, I have even more admiration for those of you who provide these services.
The Court to CART Grant was created in memory of Eligio Antonio Rosario Sr., the late stepfather and role model of Rich Germosen, FAPR, RDR, CRR. The training was created and led by Patricia Graves, FAPR, RDR, CRR, CRC, and her passion for service to the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities is palpable. The Dream Team of CART captioning included Germosen; Eileen Beltz, CRI; Nancy Hopp, FAPR, RDR, CRR, CMRS (Ret.); Heidi Thomas, FAPR, RDR, CRR, CRC; Kelly Linkowski, RPR, CRR, CRC, CPE; Toni Christy, RPR, CRR, CRC; and NCRF Manager Jill Parker Landsman.
My very first training began with learning to use platforms to share my writing via Zoom and StreamText. I was given a writing evaluation via eight five-minute takes of various types of work including accents, dense terminology, fast speakers, and about 60 seconds to prep in between takes. All of the team members were connected to watch me write, and the sessions were recorded. I then received feedback about the quality of my writing from the whole team. Other sessions involved learning about the role of a CART captioner, how to prepare for a job, interacting with clients, using phonetic translations, and how to troubleshoot. On my own time I reviewed two NCRA modules about briefing in CART and setting up for CART.
My favorite and most informative training was shadowing Brenda Perin, RPR, CRR, CRC, and Rebecca Tallerico. As a sidenote, they are both amazing writers! The jobs were incredibly fast and somewhat hard to hear at times, but they did not miss a beat.
We finished off the training with another set of three five-minute takes being observed by the team, and I received more feedback.
As a Speed and Realtime Contest competitor, I underestimated how challenging it would be to write such a wide variety of topics with near-perfect accuracy at high speeds knowing that people are relying on every word as it appears. After almost a year of working with this fantastic team, all the nuggets of wisdom have given me a strong foundation should I decide to pursue that path.
“Thank you” seem like such little words to say for all the time, planning, and training the team put together for me, but I would never have been able to achieve this much in such a short amount of time on my own. I am forever grateful.
Amy Doman, RDR, CRR, is a freelance court reporter based in Carmel, Ind. She can be reached at adoman6@yahoo.com.
