13th District Congressman Rodney Davis has introduced a bipartisan bill that will reauthorize a grant program to encourage careers in realtime writing for closed captioning and court reporting. This bill will reauthorize the Training for Realtime Writers Act, which was passed and signed into law as part of the Higher Education Act of 2008. The grant program allows colleges and universities to apply for funding specifically to help encourage more students to pursue a career in real-time writing, closed captioning, or court reporting.
Davis said the reauthorization will continue to help the 48 million people in the United States who are deaf and hard of hearing to receive information. He says the funding will go towards modernizing curriculum at colleges and help develop new captioning-specific software at universities.
The bill has received support from the Illinois Court Reporters Association. It was co-sponsored with Wisconsin Democrat Congressman Ron Kind. HR 5285 was referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor yesterday.