Access to judicial and nonjudicial proceedings: hearing impaired.

Existing law requires that a participant in any civil or criminal proceeding, court-ordered or court-provided alternative dispute resolution, or administrative hearing of a public agency, who is hearing impaired be provided with a functioning assistive listening system or a computer-aided transcription system, upon his or her request. Existing law requires, if a computer-aided transcription system is requested, sufficient display terminals be provided to allow the hearing impaired individual to read the real-time transcript of the proceeding without difficulty. Existing law requires the Court Reporters Board of California to license and regulate the practice of shorthand reporting, defined to generally mean, among other things, the making of a verbatim record of any oral court proceeding. This bill would require the Court Reporters Board of California, no later than January 1, 2019, to adopt rules and identify standards to certify operators of computer-aided transcription systems, as defined, and, on or before July 1, 2019, would require operators of those systems to be certified pursuant to those rules and standards. The bill would prohibit the official reporter or pro tem reporter assigned by the court to produce the official transcript of the proceeding from acting as the operator of the computer-aided transcription system. The bill also would prohibit a civil or criminal proceeding, court-ordered or court-provided alternative dispute resolution, or administrative hearing of a public agency from commencing until the requested system is in place and functioning and would prohibit the court from requiring the use of a computer-aided transcription system if the participant who is deaf or hard of hearing has expressed a preference to use an interpreter. The bill would require the operator of a computer-aided transcription system to provide the speech-to-text equipment to be used, unless otherwise provided by the court.