Across the country, courtrooms are going silent—not because the cases have stopped, but because there’s no one left to capture the record. The shortage of certified stenographers has reached a crisis point, delaying hearings, increasing costs, and undermining access to justice.

Look no further than this latest example in Garvin County, Oklahoma, where a group of high school civics students got to witness firsthand the importance of the process of record capture and talk to local experts about the impact of the stenographer shortage on litigants’ rights.

With examples like this popping up all over the country, it’s well past time to acknowledge reality: we can’t meet today’s demand with yesterday’s workforce.

States must modernize their rules to allow all qualified methods of capturing the record—stenographic, digital, and voice reporting—so every litigant’s voice is preserved and every case can move forward.