A word with Heidi Thomas, broadcast captioner at WTSA  Heidi
Thomas, broadcast captioner at WTSA-12  Heidi Thomas, broadcast
captioner at WTSA-12  Behind the scenes, The Assembly met with
Heidi Thomas. Heidi works for Caption First, a captioning
service provider.  A realtime text stream from WTSA-12 is
available at http://www.streamtext.net/player?event=CFI-WTSA.
The Assembly: Equal access is at the core of ITU’s mission. Can
you briefly explain to our readers what captioning is, and how
captioning services contribute to making conferences such as
WTSA more accessible?  Heidi Thomas: Stenocaptioners are highly
trained individuals who use a stenotype machine with a phonetic
keyboard (as used by court reporters) to create captions. This
machine enables them to type at speeds of up to 225 words a
minute. The average person usually speaks 160 to 180 words a
minute. The stenograph machines have a syllable-based system of
24 keys that spells words phonetically, the way they sound,
rather than how they are actually