I do a lot of different assignments, and every one teaches me something.
I do naturalization interviews with USCIS – N-400 appointments where I help people get their citizenship. That is one of my favorite things to do. When a deaf or hard of hearing person needs to communicate with a USCIS officer during their interview, I am there to repeat what the officer says on a separate screen so the applicant can read it in real time.
I do Zoom meetings and Teams meetings. Corporate settings. City council meetings and public government sessions. I do college classes, both in-person and remote. I do work for the CDC, where the terminology gets very technical and the topics can range from an Ebola outbreak in Africa to any number of public health issues I would not have known about otherwise.
I even captioned a Smithsonian event a few months ago. They were showing the movie Glory in Washington D.C. and had a Q and A afterward. I was remote, but I prepared for that job like it was the biggest job of my career – watched the movie twice, prepared all the dialogue in case they lost audio (which they did). At the end I was just sitting there fascinated by what I had been part of. I reached out to The Language Doctors afterward and said, “If you ever need someone to cover anything with the Smithsonian again, I am your girl.”
That was probably my favorite job I have ever done.
Some assignments remind you why this work matters.
There was one N-400 naturalization meeting with USCIS where the applicant was completely deaf and could barely see. The officer running the interview thought this was going to be an impossible challenge. I told them, “No, I have got this.”
The USCIS officers do not always know the software as well as I do. So I walked them through it – go to the corner of the screen, click that button where it says 18, increase it to 36 and see if that font size is big enough for her. She was not completely blind but her vision was very impaired. We adjusted the display, and she was able to read everything perfectly. She got every word of that interview. It took a little longer than usual, but she got her citizenship interview completed the way it was supposed to be.
Then there was a story I heard from another captioner. A man had been in a very bad car accident and lost his hearing. It had been a month since he could speak with his son. The son was about to leave for college and had important questions he wanted to ask his dad. The hospital brought in an on-site CART captioner who sat by the son’s bed and typed out everything he was saying so the father could read it and respond. The son said, “I have not been able to talk to my dad in a month.”
Those are the kinds of things I want to be part of.
And every time I help someone get their citizenship, it warms my heart. I have done hundreds of N-400 appointments at this point. The applicants work so hard for those interviews. Sometimes they know more about my country than I do, honestly. To be their ears for that moment, to help them get across the finish line to citizenship – that is an honor every single time.
The Regional Language Challenge
Something I did not fully appreciate before I got into CART is how much regional language differences affect my work.
Dialects vary enormously. Someone from Michigan sounds different from someone from Georgia. Someone from Virginia sounds different from someone from Louisiana, even though both are in the South. Someone might pronounce a word one way, but the same word is pronounced completely differently a few states over. Aluminum versus aluminium. Small differences that matter when you are trying to caption accurately.
Thick accents make the work more challenging, but experience helps. Over time, my ear has adjusted to pick up patterns and variations more quickly.
For non-native English speakers, the challenge can go the other way. If someone is more comfortable reading English than hearing it, CART gives them a way to fully participate in a conversation or meeting that might otherwise leave them behind.
CART, ASL, and Where They Overlap
I have so much respect for the American Sign Language community. Mad respect.
Did you know that only about 30 percent of English words are actually signed in ASL? They do something similar to what I do in CART – they capture the who, what, where, when, and why, not all the filler words in between. It is a different language, but the philosophy is similar. Get the meaning across without getting bogged down in every single word.
ASL and CART often work together on larger assignments. For that Smithsonian Glory captioning job, they had ASL interpreters and Spanish interpreters and me doing English captions. All of us serving different communities within the same event.
If I could learn something new, ASL would be at the top of my list. It is a full language and a rich one. For now, I only know the alphabet – I learned it back in eighth grade and can still do most of it, though I get tripped up around Q-R-S-T.
AI and the Human Element
Every conversation I have about CART lately includes a question about AI. It is a real concern for anyone in this field, and I understand why.
Here is what I keep coming back to. AI captioning exists and it is getting better. But it does not have eyes. It does not have a heart.
A teacher can be standing at the front of a classroom pointing at slides and saying, “All right, lesson number one has these key points, lesson number two covers this material.” AI captioning does not know what is written on those slides. It only captures the words being spoken. A human captioner in that room can see what the teacher is pointing at, understand the context, and add that context into the captions so the deaf or hard of hearing student is not left guessing.
AI also cannot pick up on sarcasm or humor the way a human can. It cannot tell when someone is joking versus serious. It cannot see the confused look on someone’s face and slow down. My husband works in an industry where he uses AI for meeting summaries constantly, and even he says AI is just not there yet. Thank God.
I am not against technology – I use Dragon voice recognition every day. Technology is a huge part of what makes my work possible. But there is a difference between using AI as a tool and letting AI replace the human judgment that this work requires. For high-stakes settings like classrooms, courtrooms, medical appointments, and immigration interviews, human captioners are still what people need.
Working with Language Service Companies
I contract with a few different companies, but whenever The Language Doctors offers me a job, I am on it. It is always a yes.
The communication with TLD is what makes the relationship work. They are appreciative. They always say thank you. They ask what they can do to help. If I need prep material, they are on it. My project manager Jasmine will check in the day before a job to make sure I have my audio link ready. If I do not, I can text her and she will have it to me before I need it.
That kind of consistent, respectful communication makes a real difference in this work. When you are contracting with multiple companies, the ones that treat you like a professional and a person are the ones you prioritize. TLD does that consistently.
The relationship goes both ways. When I found that Smithsonian job so fulfilling, I reached out to TLD directly to tell them I wanted more assignments like that. Because we have that trust built up, that kind of conversation just happens naturally.
Why More People Should Know About CART
If someone asked me what I wish more people knew, it would be this: CART exists, and it can help more people than you would think.
I wish every hospital knew about it. I wish every government agency knew about it. I wish every school knew about it. Because CART does not just help the deaf and hard of hearing community. It helps neurodivergent learners. It helps people whose first language is not English. It helps older adults whose hearing is getting weaker. It helps anyone who processes written information better than spoken information.
The American Disabilities Act requires accommodations for hard of hearing individuals in educational settings, but implementation varies. When CART is offered proactively, it changes what people can access. When it is not, people miss out on things they should have full access to.
If you are in a Teams meeting and you turn on captions, you might realize you catch details you would have missed otherwise. If you are in a classroom and captions are available, you might find yourself glancing at them to confirm what the professor just said. You do not know what you are missing until you have used it.
That is what I want people to understand. CART is not a specialty service for a small community. It is a communication access tool that makes information reach more people, more accurately, more of the time.
Advice for Aspiring CART Captioners
If you are interested in getting into this field, my advice is: go for it.
It took me three tries to find the right person to teach me, so do not get discouraged if the first instructor is not a fit. Keep looking. The right teacher makes all the difference.
The learning curve is steeper than people expect but shorter than court reporting. Traditional stenography takes years to master and has a dropout rate around 80 percent. Voice writing CART takes about six months to learn. You need to invest in the right software – Dragon voice recognition and a CAT software – which is a real upfront cost. But once you have the setup, you can work from home, set your own hours, and build a business.
There are Facebook groups and online communities for CART captioners where people are incredibly helpful. When I was researching for this conversation, I asked for advice in one of those groups and must have gotten 50 replies from people willing to help. That is what this community is like. People are so generous with their time and knowledge.
And here is the other thing worth knowing: veteran stenographers are moving over to voice writing. The traditional stenography machines are hard on the hands, and as court reporters get older, many are transitioning to voice writing because it is easier on the body. That means the voice writing community is growing, and there is a real shortage of qualified captioners right now. Demand is there.
If you like helping people, if you like the flexibility of working from home, if you like learning new subjects constantly – CART might be exactly the right career for you.
Final Thoughts
Being a CART captioner is being in the middle of moments that matter to people.
A citizenship interview. A college graduation. A hospital bedside conversation between a father and son. A movie screening where a deaf attendee can finally follow the dialogue. A city council meeting where a hard of hearing resident can participate in local government. These are the moments where CART shows up.
For me, moving from hospice care into CART captioning was a professional pivot, but the core motivation stayed the same. I want to help people. I want to be there for the human moments where communication would otherwise break down. CART lets me do that from my home in Georgia while serving people all over the country.
I hope more people learn about CART. I hope more schools, hospitals, and government agencies make it available. I hope more people who need it discover that it exists and know they can ask for it.
Because at the end of the day, this work is about making sure no one gets left out of the conversation. And that is a mission worth showing up for every day.
