Originally Posted by StenoKnight

I'm a CART provider in New York City. I went to a court reporting school and graduated when I reached 225 words per minute on the steno keyboard. It took about a year and a half to get up to speed, but the whole time I was in school and for at least six months afterward I had to work intensely on my realtime dictionary to make sure that the steno I wrote displayed correctly on the screen. Some court reporters can write perfectly in steno code and be able to read it themselves without any problem, but their output might be completely incomprehensible to someone who isn't familiar with steno. CART strives to provide 100% readable English all the time. It's an extremely challenging field. Being a good typist on the qwerty keyboard helps, but it's not everything. Your son would also have to know a lot about the English language, technology, and Deaf Culture before he could consider himself a competent CART provider. I love my job like crazy, but it took a lot of work to get here. Definitely worth it, though.