Just because CART doesn't work for some people, doesn't mean it's not appropriate for others, and I think you guys should be careful about discounting it. You're toeing a dangerous line here saying, "If he just learned ASL, then there would be no problem!" Doesn't that sound a little too familiar to you? I mean, if deaf people would just learn to read lips, then we wouldn't need interpreters. Right?-- do you see what's wrong with your argument here?
I have CART during my creative writing workshops when my work is being critiqued. I follow the conversation by listening and lipreading, but when I miss something, I can quickly glance at the computer screen to fill in gaps. It doesn't erase itself. Not sure why other systems do, but that's a technological fault, IMO, not a problem with real time captioning itself. At the end of the session, I get a transcription of the conversation, which I edit down for notes. This is far more effective for me than trying to pay attention to everyone talking and writing down notes on my notepad without looking at it (which I can do for limited amounts of time, but it requires massive amounts of concentration.)