CART is used anywhere a person needs to view text of what is said.  Meetings, classes, teleconferences, webinars, medical appointments, conferences, social events, and religious settings are some examples.

CART stands for Communication Access Realtime Translation.  It was developed in the late 1970s.  CART is a service that converts speech to instantaneous realtime text for people who cannot understand the speaker.

CART can be provided on site or remotely over the Internet.  CART captioning is based on word-for-word capture of speech with a goal of 98.5% or better accuracy.  CART providers include environmental sounds, such as laughter or the sound of sirens outside.

Captions are delivered on a secure website that is available to the consumer over the Internet.  With one click, a consumer can read the captions in real time on a device of their choice—laptop, iDevice, Smartphone, or projected for an audience.

The CART captioner listens to the event via a land line telephone and microphones, if mics are needed.  Or, an event host can set up audio for the remote CART provider over the Internet using a VoIP program such as Skype.

Captions help everyone, in the same way curb cuts and ramps are so useful. We all can benefit from captions in a noisy restaurant or on an airplane, but for the 36 million American adults reporting some amount of hearing loss ¹, and that’s 17% of us, captions are critical.

Including captions where people are speaking is logical. It makes good sense.  The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires it in lots of situations.  Adults and children who can’t hear well or who have auditory processing challenges, or people whose native language is not English, need the same access to information that people who hear well have.

1. National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorder (NIDCH)

Cost depends upon many factors, such as the hardware and software required, the complexity, and the duration of the event.  Each situation is unique.  An average range in the industry per hour is between $75 and $200.