Captioning The Word began in 1996 as an outreach to the deaf community in the small town of Milton, Ontario. Pat Gardiner, a court reporter and CTW's founder, became aware that people with hearing loss who wanted to attend church were basically shut out because of their inability to hear. She approached the pastor of her church, New Life Milton, and Captioning The Word was born. 

Pat assembled a team of volunteer court reporters from different faith backgrounds who were united by their common desire to make church services accessible to the deaf community. The wider vision of Captioning the Word has always been to see church captioning expand across the country and beyond, so that all persons with a hearing loss will be able to attend a church service and "hear" what is being said.