Utah Courts

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  1. Ed Midgley

    It is respectively here suggested that the Managing Court Reporter from Third District or an Official Court Reporter representative be added to this committee as well.
    There is a national interpreting “practice” called Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART). Used to assist hearing-impaired individuals in school settings and elsewhere, for court purposes this is the phenomenon whereby hearing-impaired court patrons — those who do not use American Sign Language — have provided for them a court reporter (called in national usage a “stenographic interpreter”) who “writes” the proceedings in stenographic realtime, the immediate computer-screen English translation of which allows the patron to be “reasonably accommodated.”
    The court interpreter’s office in Third District, for example, routinely refers CART interpreting engagements to the Managing Reporter’s Office, on the assumption that “that’s what we do.”
    Yet there are significant problems emerging, unaddressed: in policy; in records retention or dissemination; in certification; in oaths; in definition of “reasonable accommodation;” in security; in scope of official-reporter employment (CART is very different from judicial reporting; there is a specific CART certification and no state-court official reporter in Utah currently holds it); in conflict of interest; in ADA compliance and liability (there’s a recent Ninth Circuit case on the very subject of reasonable accommodation using realtime; and that same issue has frighteningly been broached by a Legal Defender in a CART engagement in the Matheson Courthouse).
    The court interpreter in Matheson arranges for ASL interpreters for court hearings, yet also refers all CART engagements to the Managing Reporter’s Office, and that office needs representation on this committee as well.
    Your attention is appreciated.