Nearly two dozen first-year students in CCAC’s (Community College of Allegheny County) stenography and court reporting program visited VITAC this week to learn more about captions and see first-hand how realtime and offline captions are created.
Mary Beth Johnson runs the CCAC program, and brings her students each year for a visit and tour of our Canonsburg facility. VITAC’s Sharon Siatkowski, Realtime Training Manager, and Crystal Cermak, Manager of Steno Captioners, help coordinate the yearly visits.
The interactive tour begins with a brief overview of captioning, and a video that introduces the class to the wide variety of services VITAC offers.
The tour includes both realtime and offline captioning demonstrations, a peek behind the scenes in the production rooms, and the opportunity to see one of our captioners writing live.
Students always are encouraged to ask any questions and this year’s group proved to be very enthusiastic!
CCAC’s court reporting program is one of 33 across the nation approved by the National Court Reporters Association and one of only two approved in Pennsylvania. Students in the program are trained to work in the courthouse, the deposition suite, or as closed captioners or CART (Computer Assisted Realtime Translation) providers.
We always enjoy the CCAC visits and look forward to getting together again!