State governments have a lot of opportunities around video content, and are taking advantage of it. Meetings, from committees to interim task force debriefings, can be streamed to expand reach and participation from communities on a broader level. However, when presenting this content, the question of accessibility comes into play, and with it the inclusion of closed captions.
Late in 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice was looking to revise the Americans with Disabilities Act Title II regulations. A possible outcome was to establish requirements for making services, programs or activities offered by state and local governments to the public via the Web accessible. The reason for this belief was that the 2010 update stated: “The Department intends to engage in additional rulemaking in the near future addressing accessibility in these areas and others, including next generation 9–1–1 and accessibility of Web sites operated by covered public entities and public accommodations.” However, this was not reflected in the 2016 update, putting an indeterminate timetable on captions possibly being required in the future. However, some states have already adopted regulations on their own requiring captions for online video on state web sites.
For those paving the path toward captioning now, before a requirement goes into law, this article presents closed captioning best practices for state governments. This entails formatting and judgement decisions, along with ways to scale the actual creation of captions as well for both live and on-demand content.
If you would like to learn more on this topic be sure to download this white paper on AI Closed Captioning Services for Local and State Governments as well.
