Speech-to-text reporter

A speech-to-text reporter (STTR), also known as a captioner, is a person who listens to what is being said and inputs it, word for word (), using an electronic shorthand keyboard or speech recognition software and a CAT software system. Their keyboard or speech recognition software is linked to a computer, which converts this information to properly spelled words. The reproduced text could then be read by deaf or hard-of-hearing people.

The latest in speech-to-text reporters are called Voice writers. Voicewriting is a method used for court reporting, and it is also used by some medical transcriptionists. Using the voicewriting method, a court reporter speaks directly into a stenomask or voice silencer—a hand-held mask containing one or two microphones and voice-dampening materials. A voice writing system consists of a stenomask, an external sound digitizer, a laptop, speech recognition software, and CAT software. A foot pedal can plug into a computer's USB port.

A real-time voice writer's words go through the mask's cable to an external USB digital signal processor, From there the words go into the computer's speech recognition engine, for conversion into streaming text. The reporter can send the streamed text to a) the Internet; b) a computer file; c) a television station for subtitling; d) to an end-user who is reading the captions via their laptop, tablet, smart phone, or e) software which formats the results in a way most familiar to judges, attorneys, or subtitling consumers.

Voice writers enjoy very high accuracy rates, based upon pure physiology. The route taken by a person's words goes from the mouth to the reporter's ear, brain, and "inner" voice. This form of repetition is naturally effortless; it is what we all do in our daily conversation, as we listen to a person speak, or when we read a book. So the most natural extension of this process is to psychologically switch the repetition mechanism from "inner voice" to the physiological "spoken voice." Therefore, we minimize the introduction of cognitive overhead in our task of routing the spoken word to its permanent destination as printed words. This streamlined process allows voice writers to achieve excellent performance for many continuous hours and greater than 98 percent accuracy at speeds as high as 350 words per minute.

Voice writers produce the same products as their stenotype colleagues, including transcripts in all electronic and printed formats. Realtime verbatim reporters connect their laptops to captioning equipment, real-time viewer programs, and provide attorneys or other clients with computer files at the end of the sessions. Only the physical way of capturing speakers' words differentiates voice writing from other methods of court reporting. Every other aspect of this profession is the same, with the exception of the time required to learn the skill, which is much shorter with voice writing.

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