Contact us by email at interpreting@alsglobal.net or via phone at 1-800-951-5020 for a free estimate on our ASL and CART services.

Trusted CART & ASL Services in Colorado Springs, CO

American Language Services has been helping businesses and other entities reach the deaf and hard of hearing community for more than 35 years. While in-person interpreting, at one time, was the only option, recent technological advances opened the door to other options. Since we offer full-service Video Remote Interpreting (VRI), this article will be comparing Virtual American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting with Communication Access Real-Time Translation (AKA- Closed Captioning & Real Time Subtitling) known as CART.

 Please note that according to the American Disability Act (ADA) that deaf and hard of hearing community have the legal right to receive full access through the use of ASL and or CART services. The ADA prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities and providing ASL interpreters for deaf individuals complies with federal law and promotes equal accessibility.

Some interesting Facts About the City of Colorado Springs

• A popular Colorado Springs myth is that the city gets 300 days of sunshine a year. Turns out this was made up by the publicist for a long-defunct railroad company, hoping to lure travelers out west.
• NORAD’s annual tradition of tracking Santa’s course every Christmas eve began when Sears in Colorado Springs accidentally published NORAD’s number (then CORAD) as a hotline to Santa—and the duty officer receiving the calls chose to play along.
• A 2013 North Korean propaganda video named Colorado Springs as one of four targets for a proposed missile strike, but it seems they have no clue where it is—when trying to pinpoint the spot on a U.S. map, they located it somewhere in Louisiana.
• At the Airplane Restaurant on Fountain Boulevard you can actually eat inside a Boeing KC-97.
• The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is the only zoo in America to be located on the side of a mountain, and also the one with the largest herd of reticulated giraffes.
• Spencer Penrose, who was born a wealthy man, became even wealthier in the 1890s gold rush. He then used his money to finance such Colorado Springs institutions as the Broadmoor Hotel, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Pikes Peak Highway, and Penrose Hospital, as well as the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun, his final resting place.
• Serbian inventor Nikolai Tesla conducted experiments in his Knob Hill lab from 1899 to 1900.
• When Tesla was testing his famous coil, he produced lightning bolts over 100 feet long that could be seen as far away as Cripple Creek. Then he knocked out the town’s main power generator, leaving everyone in Colorado Springs without electricity for an entire week.
• Science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein lived in Colorado Springs for a time, but he must have had a few issues with his neighbors. In his novel “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” had the city entirely wiped out by an attack on NORAD.
• Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz also spent some time living in the Springs, and he also chose to memorialize his neighbors by naming two of his quirkiest characters after Linus and Lucy VanPelt.
• When people in Colorado Springs use a phrase that sounds like “catch luh pooter,” they’re not talking about passing gas. Instead, it’s local-ese for a street named Cache le Poudre.
• Colorado Springs is becoming quite the mecca for medical marijuana users, as a locally grown and dispensed strain called “Charlotte’s Web” is both high in CBD (a seizure-fighting compound) and low in THC (the stuff that gets you high).
• While Colorado Springs had, at last count, 85 medical marijuana dispensaries, city ordinances still ban the sale of pot for recreational use. This is proving to be quite a boon for the economy of Manitou Springs, the only city in the area that does permit such sales.
• Colorado Springs may not be pot-friendly, but it’s certainly pet-friendly. In 2004 it was named as America’s most pet-friendly city by “Forbes,” while a 2007 issue of “Men’s Health” proclaimed it to be the best city for dogs.
• The Springs is not just popular with pets, but people, too—or at least with magazine editors. A 2006 “Money” magazine survey found Colorado Springs to be America’s best big city, while in 2009 “Outside” magazine chose it as America’s best city, period.
• Colorado City, founded in 1859, was the first settlement in the Pike’s Peak region, and it even had a brief stint as the capital of the Colorado Territory, from 1861 to 1862.
• Colorado Springs does have a pretty dry climate which means summers are, for the most part, blissfully bug-free, but this is balanced out by the fact that with one careless flick of a cigarette you may find yourself starting the next big wildfire.
• Actually, wildfires in the Springs are no joking matter. The Waldo Canyon fire of 2012 destroyed 346 homes and killed two people, while the 2013 Black Forest fires destroyed 511 homes and claimed two more lives.
• Colorado Springs is encircled on three sides by military bases: Fort Carson to the south, Peterson Air Force base to the east and the U.S. Air Force Academy to the north.
• Colorado Springs’ top four employers are all military installations, and between them they employ about 20 percent of the city’s residents.
• The nuclear bunker at Cheyenne Mountain was designed to withstand a 30 megaton nuclear explosion.
• The Cheyenne Mountain command center features in the movies “War Games,” “The Terminator,” “Independence Day,” and “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.”
• The Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel has designated worship areas for the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist faiths and an outdoor stone circle for wiccans, druids and other followers of earth-centered religions.
• Seven U.S. presidents have accepted the invitation to speak at an Air Force Academy graduation ceremony: John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
• One of the most popular visitor attractions in the Colorado Springs area is the Garden of the Gods, whose red sandstone formations were thought to be sacred by the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa and Ute tribes.
• Cave of the Winds, located just west of town, is said to be 500 million years old.
• Colorado Springs has a castle of sorts—an English Tudor-style mansion named Glen Eyrie, built by the city’s founder, William Jackson Palmer.
• The city takes its name from General Palmer’s Colorado Springs Company…and no, there never were any springs in the Springs itself.
• Poet Katharine Lee Bates, a native of Massachusetts, spent the summer of 1893 teaching at Colorado College. On a trip up Pikes Peak she was inspired to scribble a few words in a notebook which would later become the lyrics to “America the Beautiful.”
• American explorer Zebulon Pike, from whom the mountain takes its name, never actually reached its summit.
• Gold was discovered on the western slope of Pikes Peak in the 1890s, and brought such wealth to the area that by 1904 Colorado Springs was home to a third of the nation’s millionaires, earning it the nickname “City of Millionaires.”
• Pikes Peak is the second-most visited mountain in the world, behind Mount Fuji.
• Colorado Springs draws over 5 billion visitors per year, and they contribute over $1 billion to the economy. Let’s hope most of those “contributions” are the voluntary kind as opposed to, you know, traffic tickets.
• “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” was set in Colorado Springs, although it was filmed in California.
• The 1978 Robbie Benson/Lynn-Holly Johnson tour-de-force “Ice Castles” was filmed at the Broadmoor World Arena.
• The Broadmoor World Arena was also the setting for a scene in the 2004 movie “Miracle,” although some other ice arena must have been used as a stand-in since the original shut down in the ’90s.
• The United States Olympic Committee is headquartered in Colorado Springs, and the city is home to the United States Olympic Training Center.
• The Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame is also located in the Springs, as is the headquarters of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.
• Colorado Springs has both rugby and cricket clubs.
• Colorado Springs has been nicknamed the “Evangelical Vatican” due to the presence of major fundamentalist organizations including Focus on the Family, the Navigators and Andrew Wommack Ministries.
• As of 2012, the Broadmoor has received a Forbes 5-star ranking for 52 consecutive years, and an AAA 5-diamond rating for 36 consecutive years.
• The May Natural History Museum is a classic throwback ’50s roadside attraction, complete with a gigantic steel beetle straight out of a horror movie.
• The Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum is said to be haunted by the ghost of a former custodian, who was shot to death there by a fellow custodian. This happened in 1959, when building was still serving as the El Paso County Courthouse.
• Evergreen Cemetery also has a ghost, one who’s even been on TV! The ghost is thought to be that of a former sexton who committed suicide at the cemetery after he was caught embezzling its funds.
• But we’ve saved the best specter for last: Colorado Springs graveyard has a rather colorful ghost, that of a former madam who used to drive her ladies around town in a wagon pulled by a pair of tame elk.

Reference Sources: Movoto

Colorado Springs ASL & CART Language Interpreters

American Language Services is known for our high-quality, In-person and Virtual interpreters, as well as the outstanding client services we provide. We work in 200+ languages including Legal and Medical Certified and Qualified.  ASL and CART are the fastest growing languages in Colorado Springs today a language interpreter can be a very underestimated professional in the world today. There are over 100 languages spoken in the Colorado Springs Metro area alone. Many of us know one language, and we specialize in one field of study. Our Colorado Springs Interpreters are fluent in English and at least one other language, and they are knowledgeable in a wide range of specialized fields including legal, medical, technical, manufacturing, and engineering.

A brief history of ASL Interpreting in Colorado Springs

Most people know that ASL stands for American Sign Language. But not everyone knows that it is a distinct language—not simply an offshoot of American English. Though its beginnings are murky, many believe that ASL originated from a merger of French Sign Language (SLF) and local U.S. sign languages. While ASL and SLF are distinct languages, there are still some similarities between their signs.

What actually is ASL?   ASL a complete, natural language that has the same linguistic properties as spoken languages with grammar however that differs from English. ASL is expressed by movements of the hands and face.  ASL is a language completely separate and distinct from English. It contains all the fundamental features of language, with its own rules for pronunciation, word formation, and word order.  Because of the physical nature of ASL, a two-person team of ASL interpreters is required for assignments longer than 1 hour in duration.

The National Center for Health Statistics claims that 28 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss, though only between two and eight percent of them are natural ASL speakers.  Helping these select individuals translate the audible into the understandable is the job of an ASL interpreter.  If you have ever been to a play, a concert or watched a government briefing, you have probably seen an ASL interpreter signing just out of view.  An interesting side note is that Statista estimates that there are currently around 60,000 active ASL interpreters in the USA.

The Benefits of ASL Interpreting in Colorado Springs

When it comes to communicating with hard-of-hearing or deaf audiences, there are a few reasons you might want to opt for a Colorado Springs ASL interpreter over CART services. These include:

• A More Personal Connection: A real person has several advantages over a computer screen. First, human interpreters have an easier time conveying emotion. Second, they are better equipped to point out speakers and assist with pronunciation issues. Finally, an interpreter gives a deaf or hard of hearing person a chance to bond with another person.
• Enhanced Speed: Skilled interpreters can hold pace with even the fastest speakers. Lack of delay makes it easier for deaf and hard of hearing individuals to keep up with the conversation.
• Cost Effective:  While costs range by the type of ASL you need (Legal, medical, business, etc.) and when the assignment is scheduled, the cost off ASL, across the board, is less money than CART.

What Is CART?

While the majority of people know what American Sign Language is, the same cannot be said for Communication Access Real-Time Translation. Often referred to as CART, this communication method for the deaf and hard of hearing is best described as subtitling for live discussions. Unlike ASL, which relies on a professional interpreter, CART services are provided by a well-trained stenographer or transcriptionist. They transcribe anything said and then broadcast the resulting text to a phone, computer, or TV screen.

CART is often seen as a cost-effective and efficient way to ensure everybody can follow along. While often used to help deaf students in the classroom, CART captioning benefits anyone that can read.  Much like ASL interpreting, it can be done both onsite with a physical transcriptionist or remotely with an offsite one.

Why You Should Consider CART for the Colorado Springs Market

Communication Access Real-Time Translation is growing in popularity due to the following characteristics:

• It Serves a Wider Array of Deaf People: If you do a little math, you will realize that 65 percent of hard-of-hearing people in the USA do not speak ASL fluently. CART makes it so these people can join in on the conversation as well.
• CART Makes It Scalable: While people in the front rows can easily make out what an interpreter is signing, it gets harder as the distance increases. Since captions can be beamed to multiple screens simultaneously, they do not have to factor speaker distance into the equation.
• The Text Provides a Written Record: Having a transcript of everything your professor said would be a godsend come finals. Having a record of a meeting can also provide clarity to all those involved as well. The physical nature of CART recording makes that possible. This ability is one reason so many college students opt for CART over traditional ASL interpreting. 

About American Language Services

Founded in 1985, American Language Services was there to help pioneer the rise in remote ASL interpreting options. Our dedication to quality and client satisfaction in interpreting allowed us to shift from a one-woman agency into one of the most successful language agencies in the world. Our language experts provide ASL & CART interpreting services to people all around the world. Because of our 24/7 availability, you’ll never have to worry about us not being available, on off times, for an assignment.

AML-Global has some of the most impressive linguistic talents in the world. These highly skilled language professionals are recruited, screened, and tested to ensure high-quality work.

Contact us by email at interpreting@alsglobal.net or via phone at 1-800-951-5020 for a free estimate on our ASL and CART services.

ASL Interpreting or CART in Colorado Springs: Which One Better Suits Your Needs?