Section J: Position Statements

POLICY:  CART Services

Policy Statement(s)

Providing Quality CART Services – 05-02-28

NCRA has since its inception advocated the highest standards possible with regard to professionalism, continuing education, and certification to ensure that clients and consumers receive the services they need from skilled and knowledgeable practitioners. NCRA will continue to advocate this position well into the future in order to ensure the integrity of the profession and protect those individuals who depend on the services that only a qualified CART provider can offer. Therefore, the goal of all CART providers is to provide the highest quality CART possible, taking into account NCRA’s Guidelines for Professional Practice, which state: “Accept assignments using discretion with regard to skill, setting, and the consumers involved, and accurately represent the provider's qualifications for CART.”

NCRA strongly believes that only qualified CART providers should offer communication access services to ensure that consumers receive the level of service required by the Americans with Disabilities Act. If a qualified CART provider is not available locally, then remote CART should be considered, again with the primary goal of ensuring that a qualified provider is identified who can meet the communication access needs of the consumer or group. Students should not provide CART services, as poor service has a negative effect on the profession and, more importantly, on the consumer.

High-speed students should only provide CART services under the tutelage of a trainer or through an established internship program. Students should not offer their services until they’ve graduated from or successfully completed a court reporting program and have had specialized training in providing CART services.

NCRA recognizes that in certain situations an internship may not be possible or a qualified CART provider may not be available to provide the necessary services. In such instances, neither students nor schools are to be compensated for CART services.

Misidentification of CART Services – 03-17-14

NCRA believes that all individuals in need of communication access services should have the right to select what method will best meet their needs. Communication Access Realtime Translation or realtime captioning, as performed by a realtime reporter, offers the only current method for providing verbatim, immediate voice-to-text translation for those people requiring communication access. Some operators of nonverbatim notetaking methodologies have begun to describe their services as CART. This mischaracterization confuses the services offered and endangers the consumer’s ability to receive the service not only requested, but required for full and effective communication access. Moreover, this flagrant misidentification of the services that an individual can legitimately provide is a clear violation of the trust of those individuals in need of communication access assistance. Therefore, NCRA believes that only those individuals who can provide a verbatim, immediate, voice-to-text translation can legitimately describe themselves as Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) providers or realtime captioners.