Educators say schools are producing only half as many people as are needed to do the job, leaving thousands of hours of programming unavailable to the hard of hearing.

For many thousands of people, like Carol Burns of Mount Horeb, Wis., the problem is real.

"I feel less isolated and depressed when I have access to broadcasts that are closed-captioned; there need to be more of them," said Burns, former president of the Wisconsin chapter of Self Help for Hard of Hearing, an advocacy group.

Legislation pending in Congress would allocate $100 million over five years to expand closed-captioning programs and recruit more students.

"This will help us be more resourceful in increasing interest in this field," said Erin Finn, director of the Orleans Technical Institute in Philadelphia. The school is one of 20 institutions throughout the country, including the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, that would receive funds under the program.

Approximately 80 schools nationwide offer courses in closed captioning and their enrollments range from 20 to 130 students, according to the National Court Reporters Association, a Virginia-based trade group. About 350 people work as closed captioners for about 90 companies.

Finn said that the strong economy and abundance of well-paying jobs in the 1990s made it difficult to attract students who often chose computer programming or related fields.

Closed captioning is like court dictation. It is a form of technology like subtitles that allow people who are deaf or hard of hearing to watch television. Unlike subtitles, closed captioning is hidden as encoded data transmitted in the television signal. A person who wants to see closed captions must have a decoder.

Companies that provide closed captioning say that the shortage is in part caused by the precise nature of the work.

"Because it is going out there live, accuracy is even more important than it is in court reporting," said Karen Finkelstein of the National Captioning Institute, a Virginia-based company that sells its services to broadcast organizations. "I have fewer people to draw from than for court reporting."

The government has created a demand for closed captioners by requiring more hours of television to be captioned. Federal law requires networks to broadcast at least 1,800 hours of closed-captioned programming per year. That will increase to 3,600 hours by next January, under a law passed by Congress in 1996.

Almost all programming from the national networks is closed captioned. In the 50 largest local television markets, about 25 percent of programming is closed captioned. In other markets, it is 10 to 15 percent. And approximately 25 percent of all cable television programming is closed captioned.

For more information on closed captionings, including laws and the newest technology, click here.

Pittsburgh-based VITAC, which has its corporate headquarters in Canonsburg, Pa., creates realtime captioning of national news programs, sporting events, entertainment programs and live events. Click here to learn more about VITAC.

Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., who is sponsoring the legislation to provide federal money for closed-captioning training, said that he hopes to have the funds included in the spending bills for the Education Department currently working their way through Congress.

Spokesmen for the House and Senate Appropriations committees said it was too early to assess the chances for including the funds in the budget for the fiscal year starting October 1.

The shortage of captioners is making it difficult for smaller television networks and stations, which are competing with the larger organizations that have been using captioners for longer periods.

As a result, Bea Lyons of Chattanooga, Tenn., has limited access to her local television news programs.

"We have four local news stations ... with many stories having no captions. These stories are simply not accessible for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers," said Lyons, who teaches American Sign Language at Chattanooga State Technical Community College and is hard of hearing.

Captioners also provide translations at some business conferences and sporting events, though there is no federal law requiring it. The Pittsburgh Pirates and Houston Astros are the only major league baseball teams to provide such a service.

Kevin Daniel, whose full-time job is as a court reporter, works in a booth at Pittsburgh's PNC Park containing five computers that control all the contents on the stadium's scoreboard. The booth adjoins one used by the public address announcer. Daniel transcribes those announcements into a computer that transmits the words to the center field scoreboard.

Mary Beth Johnson, who teaches closed captioning at the nearby campus of the Community College of Allegheny County, said additional money to train closed captioners would make such services the norm, not the exception.

"We would make more of the world accessible to more people," she said.

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