In yesterday’s entry, I referred to an article on CapTel and wondered about the quality of the captioning. The writer of the article kindly referred me to two people. Mary kindly provided a detailed reply.
Let me begin to answer your question by saying that the accuracy of typing is variable, and thus it is difficult to assign a percentage to answer your question. Speakers’ voices are so different, so bearing this in mind, most errors can be attributed to people who are very soft spoken, have a muffled voice, a speech impediment, etc. Actually, it is not so much the typing that causes errors, as it is an unclear speaker. The people behind the screen who assist us with calls are specially trained, and the standards are very high.
Admittedly, some errors do occur and will show on the CapTel screen. When this happens, the person doing the ‘re-voicing’ will very often correct the error, showing up in parenthesis. Even when not corrected, (for myself), I can usually figure out what was meant from the rest of the text. If I cannot determine what was meant, I merely ask the caller to repeat. This usually solves the problem, but I am not satisfied until I understand the message.
My own experience in the past has been with TTY and with the 711 Relay system. The CapTel, in my opinion, far surpasses either of these, and I find that hearing people are more comfortable with the CapTel system.