Captioning at the London Olympics

The Olympic Stadium in London hosted our worldwide
event, which was witnessed by many millions, if not billions, of
people.  Some folks watching the Olympics
on TV are deaf or hard-of-hearing; some watched the action unfold while
hanging out in a loud bar or working out in a gym; still others followed
the action on the Internet.  But no one
missed out on any of the awe and excitement, thanks to those court reporters who provided TV and Internet captioning services. 

Captioning the Olympics is glory in front of and
behind the cameras, shown on multiple networks and in numerous languages.   USA’s VITAC, in captioning the 2012 Olympics
via in-house and remote captioning studios, covered
events on five networks, plus in Spanish. 
{VITAC specializes in broadcast captions, web captions,
subtitling, Spanish captions, and encoding.} 

From the opening ceremonies to the events and
personal interviews of the athletes, the new age of court reporters brought
the action and the words to the viewing screen!  We were poolside with Michael Phelps, on the court with LeBron and Kobe, and in the front
row with gymnastics Team USA, and the Flying Squirrel! 

In essence, WE are the technology -- sometimes
on location, sometimes remotely.  We are
CART providers.  We are broadcast captioners.  We are internet captioners.  We are closed captioners.  We are realtime court reporters.

National Court Reporters Association Director of Education, Karen Ruud, was one of the reporters to caption the Olympics for the first time in the early 1980s for the National Captioning Institute, noting that “We were just flooded with mail
afterwards from the deaf community telling us that we captioners were the ones
who deserved the gold medals for making the things like the 'Up Close and
Personal' pieces on the athletes accessible to them!  Captioning was truly the most rewarding work I’ve ever done in my life.” 

Stadium captioning is EXPLODING!  It’s one of the newest, fastest growing
activities for captioners and CART providers. 
And it’s where all the fun stuff happens!  In the new millennium,
whether pre-recorded or live, in person or over the Web, it’s an exceptional
benefit.  The London Olympics’ catch phrase is “Inspire a Generation.”  The athletes and the reporters, their honorable hard work, as evidenced by the captioning of the 2012 Olympics, should continue to motivate us all. Take note, future olympians, future court reporters and captioners:  The world is waiting … and watching!