Contracting a Real-Time Captioner
The National Court Reporter Association (NCRA) is the certifying body for court reporters, some of whom are also realtime captioners. Stenotyping professionals, or “reporters,” can specialize in a range of work environments, from court reporting to live video captioning. Each has its own knowledge base and skill requirements and therefore a set of certifications.
- For captioning live video, the recommended certificate is CBC, for Certified Broadcast Captioner. The reporter must know how to work with telecommunications technologies and services.
- Alternatively, CCP (Certified CART Provider) certifies the reporter to transcribe meetings, but does not include video skills. A CCP reporter can transcribe a conference call or online meeting that does not involve video. (CART stands for Communications Access Realtime Translation.)
If you are setting up the online event yourself, the captioning company (not the individual reporter) should be able to help you with the arrangements, such as providing an encoder or contracting with a realtime encoding service, determining the video software's interface requirements, and so on. Depending on your fee arrangement this may require a consulting fee in addition to the cost of the reporter’s services.