Curricula and Learning Links - Career Exploration
Speech-to-Text Transcriber
by Darla
What do you do in this job?
Transcribe high school and college classes for hearing impaired students in real-time, using specialized transcription software. You can work either in a classroom, or remote via Skype from home. (Note: Most remote companies require some in-class experience prior to beginning remote work.) You type what you hear the teacher/professor (or other students) say on one computer and the student reads what you type on another computer.
Why is it interesting? What makes it rewarding?
It's interesting because you get to be "in" classes on a wide variety of topics and at a wide variety of difficulty levels. You also get to connect with some pretty great students individually. It's rewarding because you get to help those students who have difficulty hearing participate fully in their classes as they happen (rather than them just getting notes from another student after class). You are also rewarded as you meet the challenge to skillfully accomplish your tasks every day.
How do you become qualified for this job?
You have to take a speech-to-text training program to become qualified. The most common one is called TypeWell. It's an approximately six to eight week course that costs about $400. Sometimes colleges/schools will pay for your training if you commit to working for them exclusively for a specified amount of time. It's important to try and get some "mentoring" time after training but before taking on your own assignments, when you work alongside a more experienced transcriber. This is something you can get with local (in-person) work and not with remote work.
How would a young person find out more about this job?
Go to TypeWell.com and read about it. Check to see if any schools near you train and/or hire speech-to-text transcribers. To do that, go to the Special Ed. or Disability Support section of each institution's website and look for the services provided for deaf and hard of hearing students. You want to see something like "real-time captioning" or "speech-to-text transcription" mentioned. (CART is not something you're looking for; that's different.) If you find a school that uses this type of service, contact them to see if they're hiring. If you don't, you can still take the entrepreneurial route and talk with the support staff to see if they'd take a look at the service and consider providing it for their hearing impaired students.
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