Cross Training to Become a Successful CART Provider

By Nancy L. Eaton

Are you interested in working as a CART provider?
Here's what you need to do.

I didn't set out to become a CART provider. It just happened.

I began court reporting in 1966 before I was old enough to be a notary public. While attending court reporting school, my goal was to be an official; but once there, I was unhappy with the bureaucracy and idle time. I worked for the Massachusetts Superior and Probate Courts on a per diem basis, covered hearings, depositions, conferences and conventions, worked for other reporters, provided a full range of reporting services as an independent, had short appointments as an official in both state and federal courts, and contracted with other reporters to cover excess work as a small agency owner. I tried everything. I accepted every challenge that came along. What else could I try?

In 1990, working with the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (MCDHH) and members of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA), I started providing communication access realtime translation (CART) coverage at meetings at night or on weekends a few times a month. As more consumers requested services, MCDHH asked if I'd book CART work one day a week, which turned into two, then three and was soon up to seven days a week. I loved the work, the challenge and the people. I wish there had been someone to teach me how to provide communication access. I made lots of mistakes along the way - actually, there was no way - but with the consumers we made our way together. Those who follow can benefit from the experience of CART pioneers.

Preparing to Meet the Need

Cross training from court reporting to CART or initial training straight from school allows the steno writer to work in more environments than just the legal world. There can be greater job satisfaction, regular hours and no transcripts. The pioneers in the field have applied themselves to working in strange and challenging environments and provided the communication access that allows those with hearing loss to participate more fully in life. There is a great need for more court reporters to provide CART services. The goal of cross training is to prepare reporters to meet the need on either a full- or part-time basis.

Anyone interested in providing CART will find a wonderful resource about CART at

Many assignments for CART providers are in the educational arena, and classes vary from English to scientific and medical subjects, from the Business of Sport to Latin. The basic personal dictionary is inadequate to provide accurate translation in many subject areas. While working in the legal profession, my basic dictionary stayed fairly concise at 50,000 entries and has now expanded to 85,000 with dozens of specialized dictionaries containing from a few hundred to 25,000 entries.

Try watching a video and recording not only the words but also the body language and scenic information. Think about what you would be missing in the plot if there was nothing spoken and you missed a scene because you were looking at the computer screen. Some of this is covered in the NCRA CART Guidelines (which can be found at http://cart.NCRAonline.org/manual/index.html), but every day CART providers end up in new situations where they must make decisions on their own.

Court reporters are used to working for lawyers where the client pays the bill. In the CART environment, the consumer usually is not paying for your services. Instead, you have a financial relationship with a school, a company or an organization; but your ethical obligations are to the consumer. Confidentiality is expected and required.

American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters have users with similar communication styles and needs. CART providers need to understand the communication needs of a wider group of users. The way you interact with a late-deafened, oral-deaf or hard-of-hearing consumer will vary. How long they have had their hearing loss and the degree of that hearing loss will also affect how much they rely on your translation, and how much education you need to do with them and with others in the work setting to explain your role. A first-time user may be distracted by the speed of translation, untranslates, the screen flickering or trying to take notes simultaneously. The user may be coping with catastrophic medical issues or may be well adjusted to their hearing loss. Users may become hypnotized by the continuous flow of text and fall asleep.

Providers should spend some time before the session showing consumers different screen displays and implement what works best for each user's communication needs. Reporters don't like anyone touching their computer, but in CART the consumer should be encouraged to tilt the screen or angle the computer (carefully!) so glare from overhead lights or the sun shining through the window is minimized.

Teach your user to write his or her name or a simple word on the steno machine. The individual will have a greater appreciation for what you do and a better understanding of how fingering errors can produce unreadable text. Explaining what you do or distributing the information on a handout sheet is important so teachers, employers, co-workers and others in attendance know your purpose in being there. Staying in role and not participating in the discussion is important. If the consumer also has vision issues, then you need to be able to quickly change the font size, the page layout and perhaps even the colors on the screen.

Success From the Consumer's Point of View

The consumers want communication access that is accurate. In the decade that I have been providing CART services, consumer expectations have changed the most in this area. Initially getting a 95 percent accuracy rate was wonderful, but consumers now want close to 100 percent accuracy. Early users learned to understand untranslates and read around word-boundary problems. Inaccurate homonyms were something to chuckle about. Now they point to the screen and ask, "What is that?"

Confidentiality is vital. For assignments where very private information is discussed, the user needs to be comfortable with the CART provider, so consumer preference in selecting a CART provider should be paramount. Sometimes the user's preference is for an empathetic or sociable provider, and sometimes quiet distance is preferred. Success for the consumer is full communication access so they can decide what is important for themselves.

Success From the Provider's Point of View

Reporters may view success as regular hours, a good income and no more lawyers!

All of these are possible. Assignments are usually for specific times. You know when the job will end, so you can arrange to meet your friend for lunch, pick up the kids at school or stop at the supermarket to pick up something for supper. You don't want to interfere with daytime depositions, so that 7-9 p.m. or Saturday job fits perfectly. No need to worry that the job might turn into an expedited and those personal plans be changed.

Rates vary widely across the country but generally compare favorably to reporting and captioning rates. In contrast to court reporting, in CART most of the work comes before the assignment in building a good job dictionary.

The Right Choice

Success and the challenge for me is getting the words to translate correctly, whether they're talking about inflectional morphemes, Psilocybin mushrooms, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus or choosing the menu for a conference. The reward is using my skills to help others hear. My user saying "I never knew how much I was missing" or "we got an A" is what makes me love CART.

I found my happiest work experience in the third decade of my career. There were plenty of legal assignments that I enjoyed and lots of wonderful people I met; but as a whole, I feel more fulfilled personally providing CART services. I've met many smart, sensitive and funny people while providing CART. They've enriched my life. In the early days of CART, assignments were infrequent but the impact was great. Their confusion and misunderstanding disappeared when consumers understood what was being said. Meetings became productive, and more was accomplished.

Although earlier legislation existed, the Americans With Disabilities Act was the catalyst for access. As consumers gained and demanded their right to communication access, the opportunities to provide it also increased. I am able to use my court reporting skills to make a difference in people's lives in personal, educational, employment and social settings. Consumers became friends.

When I started court reporting school, I wanted to be instrumental in the justice system. I've finally reached that goal by providing communication access for people who need hearing assistance. I make a difference in not only the justice system, but also in people's lives. Communicating the daily words leads to a lifetime of making a difference.

"What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears. The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind." (Victor Hugo, 1845)

About the Author
Nancy L. Eaton, RDR, is from Reading, Mass.

D*S	~(delete space)
SP*S	(space)
D*T	~.~(dot)
SP*T	.~([space] .25)
Poit	~.~(3.5)
P*T	.~ ([delete space].25)
BL-RB or BL*RB	\ (slash)
FL-RB or FL*-RB	/ (forward slash)
SL-RB or SL*RB	~\~ (delete space back slash delete space)
SFL-RB	~/~ (delete space/delete space)
G-N or G*-N	> (greater than sign)
L*N	< (less than sign)
FL-BGZ	^ (circumflex)
P-RS or P*-RS	% (percent sign)
*ND	& (ampersand)
PL*-S	+ (plus sign)
PAOEUP/PAOEUP	| (pipe)
M-NS or M*-NS	- (minus sign or hyphen)
A*TS	@ (at sign)
N*S	# (number sign)
STA*R or ST*R	* (asterisk)
KW*S	= (equal sign)
D*D	$~ (dollar sign delete)
UZ or *UZ	_ (underscore)
BR*K	[~ (open bracket)
BR*K/BR*K	~] (close bracket)
BR*S	{~ (open brace)
BR*S/BR*S	~} (close brace)
STPH-FPLT	(~ (open paren)
STPH-FPLT/STPH-FPLT	~) (close paren)
KW-T	"~ (open quote)
KW-T/KW-T	~" (close quote)
SKW-T	'~ (open single quote)
SKW-T/SKW-T	~' (close single quote)
TA*L	(turn on italics)
TA*L/TA*L	(turn off italics)
B-LD	(turn on bold)
B-LD/B-LD	(turn off bold)
KA*PS	(turn on all caps)
KA*PS/KA*PS	(turn off all caps)
STPHAOEUFPLT	~! (exclamation point)
H-F	~-~ (delete space hyphen delete space)
*RGBS	~,~ (delete space comma delete space) (for numbers)
0*RGBS	~,000 (delete space comma to combine thousand)

	UF/HUF	uh-huh
UNG/UNG	unh-unh
UG	ugh
O*F	oh
A*F	ah
E*F	eh
AO*	oo
O*U	ow
UM	umm
H-M	hmm
EFP	ech
BLA	blah
DA*	da
D*UF	duh
SH	shh
P*TS	psst
T*BGS	tsk