WHY I LOVE MY JOB:
Heidi Thomas
Job:
Broadcast captioner, Sandy Springs
What I do:
When news happens, you can find Heidi Thomas watching
television in her basement. From her windowless studio, she
is one of the people who makes the media’s message
accessible to people with hearing disabilities. She creates
the captions that scroll along the bottom of televisions
that are properly equipped and have the captioning feature
turned on.
Her fingers fly over
the keys of a stenograph, a machine that looks like a tiny
combination typewriter and piano, accurately transcribing
what’s being said nearly instantaneously. It’s the same
machine court reporters use to keep verbatim transcripts of
what’s being said in a courtroom.
Thomas, 51, also
takes on less-visible work, doing Communication Access
Real-time Translation (CART) for college students,
convention participants or people at business meetings.
In those situations,
she goes on-site with a person with a hearing impairment and
transcribes what the professor or the presenter is saying,
while her client watches the words appear on a laptop
computer. She can even do the translation remotely from her
studio, if the speaker is hooked up to a microphone and the
client is connected with Thomas over a high-speed wireless
Internet connection. The audio hookup goes through an
Internet phone connection, and Thomas transcribes the
lecture while listening from home. Sometimes, a client will
even use a cell phone with a speaker.
“It’s pretty
low-tech as tech is these days,” Thomas said.
Captioning for
television is remarkably low-tech as well. The connections
are usually dial-up, and the captioner writes as she
listens. In fact, fancy satellite hookups don’t work.
Because of the few-second delay in bouncing signals into
space, the captioner gets too far behind the speaker.
“We can’t afford to
have that delay,” she said.
Thomas says she
enjoys her CART work most. “I enjoy listening to lectures
about art history or calculus. … And they’re paying me to go
to school, to watch TV.”
And she’s even
worked at a wedding rehearsal dinner, where the groom was
hearing impaired and his father wanted to make sure his son
heard all the toasts.
What got me
interested in this: “This job didn’t exist” when Thomas
started as a court reporter in 1978. She went into that
field because “I love words, and I love the machine,” she
said, referring to the stenograph. Users are able to take
verbatim transcripts with it by typing what amounts to
shorthand. What looks like random letters and spaces turns
into full words and phrases with the help of training and a
computerized dictionary.
Thomas began
captioning in the mid-80s when a local television station
began using captioning and looked to court reporters to do
the work.
Best part of my
job: “Being able to work from home,” Thomas said, adding
that she enjoys the constant learning that’s involved in her
job.
Most challenging
part: “Doing the research to be prepared for each new
assignment,” she said. “There’s so much you have to know.” A
captioner needs to be familiar with the vocabulary and the
names of people who might be mentioned. “We try for
99.9-plus percent accuracy,” she said.
What people don’t
know about my job: “People don’t have any idea that when
they watch live TV, there’s a human being behind the machine
writing down every word,” she said. A captioner has to
listen, then accurately record what’s being said as it’s
being said.
During the World
Trade Center tragedy in 2001, she pointed out, “every minute
was captioned.” Thomas was working for national media at the
time, primarily NBC, and was working on the project nearly
non-stop.
What keeps me
going: “The gratitude and thanks I get from deaf and
hard of hearing customers when I work with them on-site,”
Thomas said.
Preparation
needed for this job: You need training as a court
reporter and in CART captioning from an approved school. It
takes about three years to get a certificate. You also need
flexibility to work any time important events take place,
and you have to love words, she added.
Most captioners are
independent contractors working from home, like Thomas. She
also co-owns a captioning business, EduCaption, which
employs other captioners. Most of her television business
now is from a local station and religious ministries.
Captioners buy their own equipment and software, but Thomas
pointed out that after the initial investment, there are few
ongoing expenses other than telephone charges.
Thomas is a graduate
of Brown College of Court Reporting and Medical
Transcription in Atlanta and received her CART training
later. She has captioned news, sports and entertainment
programs for the major broadcast networks, CNN, ESPN and
Home Shopping Network.
- By Karl Ritzler, for ajcjobs. Got an
interesting job that you love? E-mail your story to
jobseditor@ajc.com.
