S268JUL15

TheWeekInCongress.com

Week Ending July 15, 2005

S.268 A bill to provide competitive grants for training court reporters and closed ‘captioners’ to meet requirements for real-time writers under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and for other purposes.

BRIEF

“The report accompanying the bill explained the purpose and need this way: “There are over 28 million deaf or hard-of-hearing Americans who rely on closed captioning to get news and other vital information. Closed captioning also opens the world to the deaf and hard-of-hearing by allowing them to interact and participate in civic and personal events. Further, an additional 72 million Americans benefit from closed captioning including remedial readers, young children learning to read, and individuals learning English as a second language.

“When Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 it required that all video programming distributors provide captioning for 100 percent of non-exempt English language programming by 2006 and Spanish language programming by 2010. Currently, there are approximately 300 English language captioners and six Spanish language captioners in the United States who are able to consistently caption at the speed and accuracy levels necessary for real-time closed captioning of television programming. In order to ensure that this requirement is met for the over 1700 broadcast stations and hundreds of cable and satellite channels, the National Court Reporters Association estimates that thousands of additional captioners will be needed. This legislation would assist in fulfilling this Congressional requirement.”

The bill would fund grants for “recruitment, training and assistance, and job placement for individuals who have completed a court reporting training program”

Those entities eligible for the grants would show that they meet minimum standards of educational and financial accountability, with a curriculum capable of training real-time writers qualified to provide captioning services; is accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the Department of Education; and is participating in student aid programs under title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

Sponsor: Senator Tom Harkin (IA)

Vote: Passed Senate by Unanimous Consent (July 11, 2005)

Cost to the taxpayers: The bill appropriates $80 million for five years. CBO calculates that $67 million would be spent. The money would be spent on two year grants not to exceed $1.5 million each.

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