On July 31, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, otherwise known as the Higher Education Reauthorization Bill. Included in the Act is NCRA’s Training for Realtime Writers language, which creates a competitive grant program to train realtime writers to provide both captioned information and communication access for the 30 million Americans who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 created a 2006 deadline for all new English broadcasting to be fully captioned. This deadline has come and gone, and this requirement has not been filled. For the past eight years, NCRA has been working closely with legislators on Capitol Hill in order to remedy this disparity by gaining funding for the training of realtime writers.
On August 14, 2008, President Bush signed the Act into law. Going forward, the Government Relations Department will monitor this language as it proceeds through the appropriations process and work to ensure that the program is fully funded. Moreover, NCRA will provide information to reporter training programs so that they can seek grants once the Department of Education creates guidance on the grant process.
If you have any questions, please contact NCRA.
Last updated October 17, 2008.