Title: Using Transcription and Technology to Faciliatate Communication 

Presenter: T.J Digazia

Credit: 1 TT or 1 PD

Session Description: There are about 10 million Americans who comprise the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. Over the years, technology such as postcaptioning has advanced to assist these individuals with their communication needs. This presentation will cover several of the technologies that are now being used to capture audio, the transcription process, the platform used for transcribing, the unique style rules for transcripts, and how the transcribed text files are aligned (time coded) and exported into a caption file (SRT, VTT, TTML, SAMI). Also discussed will be the optional service of creating an Open Caption Video that permanently burns the captions into each frame of the video file ensuring maximum accessibility regardless of the media player used. The speaker will explain how medical transcriptionists can use their mastery of the medical language and skills in keyboarding to transcribe audio files, especially those from the healthcare industry and medical schools.    
 
Learning Objectives
    1. Transcription for captioning.
    2. Using transcription skills in communication.
    3. A valuable asset to overall precise accuracy of spoken words.

Bio: T.J. DiGrazia has over 5 years of experience in the CART/Captioning Industry. He is on the frontline overseeing operations for the entire caption family of companies, including ACS, EduCAPTION, Closed Caption Productions, PostCAP and Home Team Captions. He oversees all operations staff and is still involved in training new clients on how to use the services provided by their caption family. He was instrumental in coordinating an interface between the Scheduling Application Management program (SAM) and their internet-based text service, StreamText. T.J. brings a unique combination of authority, knowledge and warmth to the overall operations.