The Friday afternoon session “Captioning: A New World” at the 2014 NCRA Convention & Expo, held July 31 – Aug. 2 in San Francisco, discussed the rebranding of the CART and captioning industry, focusing on how the changes refocus on client services.
“Our industry has gone through broad, sweeping changes,” said Heidi Thomas, RDR, CRR, CBC, talking about CART captioning. “We’re growing, and we need to embrace that.” Thomas pointed out that while the technology is different, the skill set needed to provide captioning is the same. “This is about the folks who use our services and need our services,” Thomas added.
Christina Lewellen, the NCRA marketing, membership, and communications senior director, presented CaptioningMatters.com, an NCRA-affiliated website dedicated to CART services. NCRA has a baseline of a website and a marketing campaign, Lewellen said, and the website offers resources for CART users, like appropriate language to ensure CART services or where to find those services. Lewellen pointed out that while there is often confusion over what CART actually stands for, the bottom line is about empowering people to ask for the services they need. Lewellen invited participants to contribute to CaptioningMatters.com so that the baseline website can grow to become more effective.
Jennifer Schuck, RDR, CRR, CCP, CBC, asked the audience to text how they describe their job, and the audience was able to see which words were used most often through a projected page. This information will also be passed onto the CART and Captioning Committee to help in their work. Schuck also shared a list of FAQs that the committee has developed for CART providers to ensure that the consumer gets what he or she needs. The FAQs are available on the NCRA website.
