ASL and CART Services: Getting Language Access Right for Your Meetings and Events

The request usually arrives late. Eleven days before the public hearing, the community forum, the district training, or the annual conference, someone forwards an email: a registrant is deaf and has asked for an interpreter. Now you are trying to figure out, in a single afternoon, what exactly they asked for, whether you are legally required to provide it, who provides it, and what happens if you get it wrong.

That scramble is avoidable, and the underlying decision is far less mysterious than it looks. There are two accommodations that come up in nearly every one of these requests — ASL interpretation and CART — and they are not interchangeable. Booking the wrong one costs you the meeting and leaves the participant just as excluded as if you had booked nothing at all.

Here is how the two differ, what the law actually asks of you, and the short list of things to have ready before you request a quote.

What is the difference between ASL interpretation and CART?

ASL interpretation puts a qualified American Sign Language interpreter in the room, or on video, rendering spoken content into ASL and signed content back into spoken English. It is a live, two-way language service between two distinct languages — American Sign Language is not English on the hands, and it has its own grammar and syntax.

CART stands for Communication Access Realtime Translation. The Department of Justice describes it as a service similar to court reporting, in which a transcriber types what is being said at a meeting or event into a computer that projects the words onto a screen. The participant reads a near-verbatim English text stream of the proceeding as it happens.

So one delivers a language. The other delivers text. That distinction drives everything else.

Which one does a deaf or hard-of-hearing participant actually need?

You do not have to guess, and you should not. The single most important operational fact in this whole area is that the person requesting the accommodation is the one who knows the answer — and under Title II of the ADA, their request carries legal weight, not just courtesy weight.

That said, the general pattern is worth understanding so you can scope a quote intelligently:

• A participant who is culturally Deaf and uses ASL as a primary language will almost always request ASL interpretation. Reading a text feed in a second language, at speaking speed, for two hours, is not equal access for them.
• A participant who is late-deafened or hard of hearing and does not sign will typically request CART. English text is their native channel.
• Some settings call for both — a large public meeting with a mixed audience, a multi-day conference, a training with a written record everyone will reference afterward.

CART also produces something ASL cannot: a readable transcript. That is genuinely useful for hearings, board meetings, and trainings, and it is one reason CART sometimes gets requested for reasons that have nothing to do with hearing loss.

What does the ADA actually require you to provide?

For state and local government entities, 28 CFR 35.160(b)(1) requires that you furnish appropriate auxiliary aids and services where necessary to afford individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to participate in, and enjoy the benefits of, a service, program, or activity. Qualified interpreters and real-time captioning are both named auxiliary aids.

The regulation goes on, at 35.160(b)(2), to say that the type of aid which is appropriate varies with the method of communication the individual uses, the nature, length, and complexity of the communication, and the context in which it takes place. In other words: a fifteen-minute counter transaction and a four-hour rezoning hearing are not the same accommodation problem.

Then comes the part agencies most often miss. Department of Justice guidance is explicit that Title II entities must give primary consideration to the choice of aid or service requested by the person who has a communication disability, and must honor that choice unless they can demonstrate that an equally effective alternative exists, or that the request would be an undue burden or a fundamental alteration. Undue burden is a high bar and a formal one: for a Title II entity, that determination has to be made in writing by a department head or higher official. It is not a decision a facilities coordinator makes by quietly declining a quote.

Private businesses and nonprofits covered by Title III of the ADA have a parallel obligation under 28 CFR 36.303, and federally funded programs carry their own duty under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The primary-consideration standard is a Title II rule specifically — but consulting the participant is the right practice regardless of which statute applies to you.

One more thread worth pulling: if you livestream the meeting, you are now also in web-accessibility territory, where live captions sit at Level AA of WCAG for streamed audio content. If you have not mapped that obligation yet, start with our breakdown of the ADA Title II web accessibility rule.

Can you ask participants to bring their own interpreter?

No. 28 CFR 35.160(c) is direct about this: a public entity cannot require an individual with a disability to bring another individual to interpret. It also sharply limits when you may rely on an accompanying adult to interpret — essentially only in an emergency, or when the individual specifically requests it and it is reasonable under the circumstances — and it restricts relying on minor children further still.

This matters because the informal workaround is so tempting. Someone’s spouse signs. A staff member took two semesters of ASL. Neither is an accommodation, and in a hearing, a clinical encounter, or a disciplinary proceeding, neither is defensible.

Is remote ASL or remote CART good enough?

Often, yes — and the regulation anticipates it. But 28 CFR 35.160(d) sets real performance standards for video remote interpreting, and they are specific: real-time, full-motion video and audio over a high-speed connection without lags or choppy, blurry quality; an image large enough to display the interpreter’s face, arms, hands, and fingers, and the participant’s as well; clear, audible transmission of voices; and adequate training for the people who have to operate the system.

Read that list again as a facilities checklist, because that is what it is. A laptop webcam at the back of a conference room, or hotel Wi-Fi shared with 300 attendees, will fail it. Remote CART is usually less fragile — it needs a clean audio feed and a screen or second device — but a bad microphone will still wreck it.

What makes an interpreter or captioner “qualified”?

DOJ’s definition of a qualified interpreter is functional, not credential-based: someone able to interpret effectively, accurately, and impartially, both receptively and expressively, using any necessary specialized vocabulary. No particular certification is legally required.

That said, credentials are the fastest way to check that a provider is not improvising. On the ASL side, the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf currently offers two national certifications — the National Interpreter Certification, in place since 2005, and the Certified Deaf Interpreter credential — with the exams developed and administered by the Center for Assessment of Sign Language Interpreters. Maintaining certification takes 8.0 CEUs over a four-year cycle, current RID membership, and adherence to RID’s Code of Professional Conduct. Several states also run their own interpreter screening, and some settings — courts especially — layer on additional requirements.

On the CART side, the National Court Reporters Association offers the Certified Realtime Captioner credential, created in 2015 by combining its earlier broadcast-captioner and CART-provider designations. It requires a written knowledge test plus a skills test written in real time at 180 words per minute on literary material, with 3.0 CEUs every three years to renew.

Ask which credential the assigned professional holds, and whether they have worked your specific setting. A conference-stage interpreter and a courtroom interpreter are not automatically the same person.

What should you have ready before requesting a quote?

The bookings that go smoothly all share the same prep. Have these five things in hand:

1. Date, start and end time, and time zone, plus whether the event is in person, virtual, or hybrid.
2. The accommodation as the participant stated it — ASL, CART, or both. Quote what they asked for rather than translating it into what you assume they meant.
3. Subject matter and any specialized vocabulary. Agenda packets, slide decks, acronym lists, names of speakers and board members. Get these to the provider in advance; a technical hearing with no prep materials is where accuracy goes to die.
4. Duration and format. Long or continuous sessions require a team of two interpreters or captioners working in rotation, because sustained real-time work degrades sharply past roughly an hour. Budget for a team on anything long, rather than one person and optimism.
5. The room and the tech. Sightlines and lighting for the interpreter, screen placement for the CART text, a microphone plan, and a named person running the platform.

If accessibility keeps arriving as a last-minute email at your organization, the fix is upstream: build the accommodation request into your registration form and your event checklist, and have one provider standing by instead of sourcing under deadline every time. Our accessibility and compliance services practice exists for exactly that handoff, and if your events produce recordings afterward, our guide to captions and audio description covers the post-event half of the obligation.

Get the access booked before the deadline pressure starts

You do not need to become an ADA specialist to run an accessible meeting. You need to ask the participant what they need, take their answer seriously, and hand a clear scope to a provider who can staff it properly.

Taika Translations places qualified ASL interpreters and CART captioners for public meetings, hearings, classrooms, courtrooms, conferences, and hybrid events nationwide — on-site or remote, with one project manager accountable from scope through the last minute of the session. Tell us the date, the format, and the subject matter, and we will tell you what the setting actually requires.

Request an ASL or CART quote, or read more about how ASL interpretation and CART services are scoped and delivered.