Accessibility for Your Community
We help Public, Education, and Government broadcasters meet mandatory accessibility requirements and better serve their community.
Expand your audience while meeting ADA requirements.
Municipal meetings and other broadcast and streaming content must be captioned to serve the deaf and hard-of-hearing, and recent clarifications by the DOJ mandate descriptive audio to serve the blind and visually impaired audience. In addition, not all members of the local community use English as their primary language and can be better served with civic information that is translated into their native language. With latest-generation technology you can address these requirements and communication improvements in numerous ways.
Captioning and Translation
Captioning in the original source language is required by the ADA, but don't stop there when you can translate to additional languages. With our help you can serve the deaf, hard-of-hearing, and non-native speakers.
Descriptive Audio
Increase accessibility for blind and low-vision audiences by adding standard or extended audio descriptions to your video files.
Dubbing and Secondary Audio
Deliver your content in more languages and reach non-English speakers in your community. Match the tone and voice of the original with emotive dubbing.
Speech to Sign Language
Go beyond text-based subtitles and provide sign language to reach an even larger audience. Automating sign language is hard, but with new models it's a solvable challenge.
Simplifying accessibility for local broadcasters.
Municipal Captioning Inc. is dedicated to helping local government and non-profit broadcasters understand closed captioning, assistive technologies, and content playback systems. Founded in 2017 by Daniell Krawczyk, MC was born out of a recognition that PEG media broadcasters needed reliable information and guidance regarding ADA requirements and how to navigate the often-confusing array of accessibility options available, to find the best solution for their broadcast channels, streams, and live meetings. Today we provide our clients with reliable and understandable information, as well as sales, integration, and support of content distribution and accessibility solutions.
The upcoming ADA deadline
The DOJ's 2024 Title II rule (opens in new tab) holds state and local government video to a single standard, WCAG 2.1 Level AA. For video, that comes down to two things.
Captions on anything with audio, live streams and posted recordings alike.
Audio description on recorded video: a narrated track describing what's happening on screen for viewers who are blind or have low vision.
26 April 2027 Communities of 50,000 or more.
26 April 2028 Communities under 50,000, and special districts.
Not sure which applies to you? Go by the population your government serves, not the size of your department. A library or police department uses its city's population. School districts use their city or county, and are not special districts.
Why it matters now. Anyone can file a complaint or lawsuit, and they don't have to live in your community.
Standard or extended description?
WCAG 2.1 Level AA asks only for standard audio description. But the obligation underneath it is effective communication (opens in new tab): your blind and low-vision audience should come away with the same information as everyone else.
Standard description fits narration into the natural gaps in the existing audio. In civic video those gaps are often tiny, sometimes as short as three seconds, and they rarely fall where the information actually appears. A slide goes up while someone keeps talking over it.
Extended description pauses the video so the narration has room to do its job, instead of being squeezed into whatever silence a meeting happens to leave behind.
Our recommendation. When the information on screen is more than the gaps can carry, or the gaps fall in the wrong places, use extended description. Meeting the standard and actually being understood are not always the same thing.
Get in touch.
We want to hear from you, drop us a note and tell us what you need.
