Submitted by Nancy Eaton, CCP, CRR, FAPR, RDR

YOU DON’T HAVE TO GIVE UP COURT REPORTING TO DO CART!

“Bring the world to someone. Provide communication access”

In 1990 court reporters in Massachusetts started working with the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (MCDHH) to provide communication access for late deafened and hard of hearing people. English is the first language for members of these populations. They often lose their hearing later in life and do not know American Sign Language (ASL). Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) makes the difference between isolation from and participation in the world. The first year we lugged a full desktop system to meetings once a month. We were on DOS-based computers then and had an add-on program that allowed us to increase the size of the font two times or four times greater than standard text. To display the screen we had cumbersome and difficult LCD projectors that went on top of overhead projectors. We had even more to “cart” than now. Working conditions are much improved. Windows-based notebook computers are smaller, lighter, can do any sized font and display in a variety of colors.

The acronym originally stood for Computer-Aided Realtime Translation. After some time, we decided that didn’t really describe what we were doing; but the name CART had caught on – at least here in Massachusetts – so an effort was made to find a meaningful name – Communication Access Realtime Translation was the result. In other areas of the country they call it Realtime Captioning.

At the beginning we primarily covered events on an evening or a weekend and continued to do traditional court reporting. We did get paid but mentally we considered it pro bono type work. As more consumers started seeing CART in meetings and educational settings, more people were asking for the service. At that time there were four of us who were providing CART services. We were each asked to set aside one day a week to cover CART requests. The number of requests kept growing.

Sometimes there are requests seven days a week. Many of us work days, evenings and weekends to meet communication access requests. College requests have grown the most rapidly and now consumers are asking for more access to social events and religious settings. In other parts of the country most court reporters are providing CART services 10-90% of their time and still do traditional court reporting. According to the 2003 NCRA CART survey, in which 156 people responded, 46% of those doing CART spent less than 25% of their time doing so and earned up to $20,000. 15% of the respondents devoted 30-75% of their time to CART and earned between $50,000 and $70,000.

Here in Massachusetts the practice has evolved that providers either do CART full time or not at all. A few folks have combined CART and captioning or court reporting and captioning. MCDHH Referral Service’s fill rate statistics for the last 18 months showed 50% of the requests were unfilled. This is in addition to privately generated work not booked through the Commission.

Every day there are people in Massachusetts that could benefit from a combination of your skills, computer technology and realtime software to provide communication access.

MCDHH for the second year has endorsed the CART Training and Mentorship Program (CTMP) to provide training and mentoring to court reporters interested in cross-training to learn how to provide communication access which meets specific consumer needs.

You have the opportunity to attend there day-long seminars on April 24, May 15 and June 19, 2004 to learn how to expand your professional offerings to provide CART services. They will all be given at the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing’s office in Dorchester. For more information, contact Nancy Eaton, CCP, CRR, FAPR, RDR at eatonnancy@cs.com or Nini Silver, Mentorship Coordinator, at macsilver7@earthlink.net