[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Page 4896]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               TRAINING FOR REALTIME WRITERS ACT OF 2003

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                             HON. RON KIND

                              of wisconsin

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, February 27, 2003

  Mr. KIND. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to sponsor the ``Training for 
Realtime Writers Act of 2003,'' which I introduced this afternoon with 
Representative Isakson from Georgia. I also would like to thank Senator 
Harkin for introducing the companion bill in the Senate.
  Today, over 28 million Americans are deaf or hard of hearing. 
Approximately 90% of these individuals rely on captioning services to 
participate in mainstream activities. In addition, research has found 
that many more people can benefit from watching captioning television, 
such as those learning English as a second language, illiterate adults, 
young children learning to read, and remedial readers.
  Today the potential audience for captioned television is estimated at 
nearly 100 million, including the deaf and hard-of-hearing. There are 
approximately 30 million learning English as a second language, 27 
million illiterate adults, 12 million young children learning to read, 
and 3.7 million remedial readers.
  Furthermore, the events of September 11th demonstrate how imperative 
it is to have more closed captions. The captioning industry was 
strained to capacity in this effort to ensure that round-the-clock news 
and information was accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing citizens 
of our country. Without this service, a segment of our population would 
have been without critical information during a national crisis.
  The Telecommunications Act of 1996 mandated that all television 
programming be fully captioned by 2006. The mandate is unrealistic, 
however, given the current number of trained closed captioners. 
Presently, schools are educating only half as many closed captioners as 
are needed to provide captioning services, leaving thousands of hours 
of programming unavailable to the deaf or hard of hearing. Thus, this 
legislation we are introducing today will provide grants to schools to 
educate students to become proficient in closed captioning and provide 
this important service to many people.
  It is not right for so many of our citizens to be without access to 
such significant news or be excluded from mainstream activities due to 
a lack in captioning services. Let us fulfill the promise we made in 
the Telecommunication Act of 1996 and help the deaf and hard of hearing 
and many others by increasing the number of qualified closed 
captioners. This will ensure access to closed captioning television for 
everyone who requires such services.

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