With the signing of The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, the Court Reporting and Captioning Careers departments will now offer closed captioning services to the Cerritos College staff community as skill enhancement projects for students in its department.

The new legislation, signed into action by President Barack Obama on on October 8, 2011, focuses on establishing complete accessibility of all media to those with reading and hearing disabilities through closed captioning, both visual and audio.

The anticipated chain of events of this legislature and the grant money that comes with it has the CRCC here at Cerritos College gearing up for an increase in students looking to take advantage of the benefits of this new law will provide.

A web-submission form is in the works and submissions for closed captioning services will begin in mid-February and will be limited to staff and selected motion picture editing courses, according to Professor of Court Reporting Vykki Morgan.

“The campus community initially meant the instructors, the library; instructional media, and we’ve done closed captioning work with film professor Steven Hirohama and his film students and their film projects. If there is the availability to do that too, we’re going to have some work experience projects and let our students work on it,” Morgan said.

She also gives an example that explains the importance for the availability of captioning services here on campus.

“I have received some requests from a teacher who has a hearing impaired student in their class and they have videos they would like to have captioned right away.”

National Court Reporting Association President Melanie Humphrey-Sonntag foresees the signing of this bill will usher in an increase of work opportunities to the Court Reporting community.

“When you envision the amount of live broadcast events that will be streamed to the Internet so that people can watch them on their computers,  smart phones, and iPads and then the corresponding need for real-time reporters to provide captioning services, this is a significant event for the court reporting profession,” Humphrey-Sonntag said.

Psychology major and film student German Sanchez hopes to have his student film documentary used as a work experience project by the CRCC. “Captioning is required I believe if we want to show our films on an official Cerritos College website. I’ve worked with a lot of people with hearing disabilities and this is perfect. I love making documentaries and it’s meant to tell everybody a certain point of view. And with captioning it will be perfect because people who can’t hear can see it and understand what’s going on,” Sanchez said.

Professor of Court Reporting/Captioning Business Education Mary Balmages understands the uniqueness of this program in the Southern California area.

“It’s just great that we can have this service available now. There aren’t any other community colleges other than Cypress that has anything like this going on,” Balmages said.