Qualified broadcast captioners are in demand since the federal law mandates that all new English-language programming be captioned by January 2006. Many say that a lack of awareness about this profession is the reason for the shortage.

Career Colleges of Chicago is one of the facilities where court reporting and captioning are taught. Peg Sokalski is the department head.

"A good court reporter or captioner needs to have a very good vocabulary base they need to be able to pick up on languages and sounds quickly and easily," said Sokalski.

This is a 2 year program.

"Our classes are full time day school. Classes meet four times a week, we have an evening program that generally a part time program and that meets two times a week and it will take those students a little bit longer to get through school," said Sokalski.

Most start as court reporter then get additional training to become captioners.

"It's different because they are working with different materials in court and a lot of judicial reporting, they are going back and forth with question and answer testimony and a lot of captiong they've doing sentencing and paragraphs and literary types of materials so it can be more difficult from a vocabulary standpoint," said Sokalski.

Technology has enabled captioner to work anywhere, including at home. A stenographic keyboard is connected to a computer. They listen to the program and then type the words. The computer translates the keystrokes into caption. Captioned information is then transmitted across the telephone lines for broadcast.

ABC 7 News captioning is real time. During ABC7's Karen Meyer's segment, captioning is open.

Rabindra Bickhen is a part time student. She has always wanted to work in the court.

"I hadn't heard of broadcasting captioning. I hadn't any idea of how they did the captioning on TV but now that I have heard about it, I would be interested, I think its cool," said Bickhen.

Sue Pagurko would defiantly consider a captioning job.

"It's challenging but it is fun, it's worth the challenge," said Pagurko.

"We need to get more publicity out about our profession and we need to get, we need to get people to come into our profession who maybe already have a college degree and they would like to come back for you know a very specialized training for this," said Sokalski.

For more information about becoming court reporter and captioner visit the National Court Report Association www.ncraonline.org.

NCRA LIST OF APPROVED COURT REPORTER TRAINING PROGRAMS

ILLINOIS

Career Colleges of Chicago

11 East Adams St.

Chicago, IL 60603
www.careerchi.com
312-895-6300

MacCormac College
29 E. Madison
Chicago, IL 60602-1667
www.maccormac.edu
312-922-1884

Midstate College
411 W Northmoor Road
Peoria, IL 61614
www.midstate.edu
309-692-4092

South Suburban College
16333 South Kilbourn Ave.
Oak Forest, IL 60452
www.southsuburbancollege.edu
708-596-2000 x3216

Sparks College
131 South Morgan St.
Shelbyville, IL 62565
www.sparkscollege.org
217-774-5112

INDIANA

College of Court Reporting
Inc.
111 W. 10th St., #111
Hobart, IN 46342-5968
www.ccr.edu
219-942-1459
IOWA

AIB College of Business
2500 Fleur Dr.
Des Moines, IA 50321
www.aib.edu
515-244-4221

MICHIGAN

Academy of Court
Reporting
1330 W. 14 Mile Rd.
Clawson, MI 48017
www.acr.edu
248-435-9030

MISSOURI

Kansas City College
800 E. 101 Terr., #100
Kansas City, MO 64131
www.metropolitancollege.edu
816-444-2232

St. Louis Community
College at Meramec
11333 Big Bend Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63122-5799
www.stlcc.edu
314-984-7500

OHIO

Academy of Court
Reporting
2930 West Market St.
Akron, OH 44333
www.acr.edu
330-867-4030

Academy of Court
Reporting
2044 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44114
www.acr.edu
216-861-3222

Academy of Court
Reporting
630 East Broad St.
Columbus, OH 43215
www.acr.edu
614-221-7770

Clark State Community
College
100 S. Limestone St.
P.O. Box 570
Springfield, OH 45501
www.clarkstate.edu
937-328-8080

Cuyahoga Community
College
Western Campus
11000 Pleasant Valley Rd.
Parma, OH 44130
www.tri-c.edu
216-987-5000

Stark State College of
Technology
6200 Frank Ave., N.W.
Canton, OH 44720
www.starkstate.edu
330-966-6587

WISCONSIN

Lakeshore Technical
College
1290 North Ave.
Cleveland, WI 53015
www.gotoltc.edu
920-693-1644
888-GOTOLTC

Madison Area Technical
College
3550 Anderson St.
Madison, WI 53704
www.matcmadison.edu
608-246-6100

By Karen Meyer
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=community&id=3623350