Sorenson's name is built around ASL and Video Relay Service — the spoken-language work running alongside it moves differently. Here's how a private transcription and translation layer fits it, on your side of the call only.
Say 'Sorenson' to another interpreter and the first association is almost always Video Relay Service and ASL — that's the company's center of gravity, and fairly so. Less visible is the spoken-language work running beside it: on-site and video remote interpreting for hearing clients and family members in education, healthcare, and event settings where Deaf accessibility is often the reason the assignment exists at all. This page is for that spoken-language interpreter, not the ASL interpreter — the pace, the settings, and what a caption layer can add are a different question. Here's a practical look at running one beside the work.
Spoken-language assignments inside a company organized around Deaf and hard-of-hearing accessibility show up in a specific set of places: a school meeting where a Deaf student's hearing parent needs a spoken-language interpreter alongside the ASL interpreter working with the student, a hospital visit, a captioned media production, a community or enterprise event. Some of it is scheduled with real notice; some is on demand, over video or phone, with none.
Working across scheduled and on-demand assignments means recalibrating your mental model call to call — the preparation habits that serve a school meeting don't transfer to a cold video connect, and the reverse is just as true. Add coordinating with another interpreter on the same case, or the visibility of interpreting at an event with an audience, and the ordinary load of accurate real-time rendering picks up a second layer most agency work doesn't add.
We go into the general mechanics in interpreter cognitive load and burnout — the short version is that anything moving detail off your memory and onto a screen only you can see is real capacity back, regardless of which kind of assignment it is.
Unicaption is a real-time captioning and translation copilot for the individual spoken-language interpreter — a private layer that runs on your own device, not a client-facing product and not a substitute for anything Sorenson itself provides. It listens to your microphone or your system audio only:
For a wider comparison of copilots built specifically for interpreters, see Unicaption vs Interpreter.
If you have the setting in advance — a school meeting, a medical visit, an event — load likely terminology into your dictionary ahead of time. This is the prep window an on-demand call never gives you.
Set your audio source once and leave it — microphone for a headset, system audio for a browser or platform — so there's nothing to configure when the connect happens.
Keep interpreting the way you always do; the transcript is there for the detail your memory would otherwise carry alone, especially useful when you're coordinating with another interpreter on the same case.
Add whatever term surprised you — a school district's program name, a clinical term, an event-specific phrase — to the dictionary while it's still fresh.
Spoken-language work inside an accessibility-focused company still runs on the same confidentiality expectations as any interpreting assignment — student records, medical detail, personal circumstance. Unicaption's design holds to that: sessions are end-to-end encrypted, audio is never stored, transcripts are deleted the moment the session ends, and nothing is used to train models. It's worth being plain about what this is and isn't: Unicaption is a private tool for your own working memory, not a captioning or CART service delivered to a client, and it has no connection to any service Sorenson itself provides.
Your agency's own policies on tools and aids during an assignment are Sorenson's to set and yours to know — check directly before you assume, the same judgment you'd apply to any resource you bring to a case.
That depends on Sorenson's own policies, which you should check directly — we won't pretend to speak for them. What we can say is what Unicaption does: it runs locally on your own device, reads only your microphone or system audio, never joins or records the assignment, and deletes transcripts when the session ends. Whether an aid like this is appropriate on a given case is a professional judgment that stays with you and your agency's guidance.
No, and it's worth being clear about the difference. Sorenson's captioning and CART offerings are client-facing services the company delivers and stands behind. Unicaption is unrelated, independent software: a private transcription layer that runs on an individual interpreter's own device, visible only to them, with no connection to Sorenson or any service it provides.
Yes. Because Unicaption reads your microphone or your computer's system audio rather than integrating with a specific platform, it runs the same way on an on-site assignment with a laptop nearby as it does on a video remote call — nothing to reconfigure between the two.
Every account gets 30 free minutes each week, renewing automatically, no credit card required. Paid plans run from Instant at $9/month to Ultra at $149/month, with annual discounts. Spend a few weeks of free minutes across real assignments first, then decide what actually fits your usage.
30 free minutes every week, no credit card. A private layer, not a client-facing service.
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