What is Realtime?

Realtime technology allows court reporters to instantly convert their Stenographic notes into English text and, thus, allowing attorneys instant access to the written record during a judicial proceeding.

To perform realtime, court reporters must learn a conflict-free theory.  They need to continuously build their dictionaries to ensure that names, places, and events will translate correctly.  Speed is vital to a good realtime transcript, as reporters generally take down testimony at an average speed of 180 words per minute or greater. 

During a deposition or a trial, judges and attorneys have the ability to review and mark portions of testimony and make notes within the transcript on their laptops and never have to interrupt the proceedings!  Searches for specific words, phrases, roots of words, and other complicated information can also be done simultaneously. 

Realtime reporting is an excellent tool to help the hard-of-hearing individual as well. Most of the deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the United States developed hearing loss after acquiring language skills.  Many of them may find it helpful and easier to read the realtime text than to use ASL interpretation.

Also, realtime reporting is used for the closed-captioning you see on most television programs today.