A professionally trained court stenographer, referred to as a Real-Time Captioner, sits in the front of the class beside the student. It is necessary for the captioner to be close to the professor so s/he can hear clearly. Please note, although real-time captioning is a "verbatim" technique, if the lecture material is spoken too quickly, too softly, or incoherently, it won't be properly translated. Only words understood and heard by the captioner can be taken down.

Providing copies of the general vocabulary and/or glossary of words from class text books are essential for the best translation of the various class topics. The captioner needs these word lists to manually build a special "computer dictionary" ahead of time. Therefore, having the student purchase the text books as soon as possible will help greatly. The more terminology that can be entered ahead of time, the better the translation screen will look when the student is reading the computer screen during class. The student will sign an agreement to use lecture notes for his/her own study purposes only and not to distribute the notes to peers.

As with interpreting, stenography is physically tiring and can lead to permanent damage if done without breaks. Therefore, if a class is 1 hour 40 minutes in length or longer, the captioner is in need of a break.

The captioner will not participate in class discussions. The captioner can facilitate in one-on-one communications between others in the class and the student, via the laptop, but the captioner is not responsible for voicing for the hearing-impaired student.