In the past year, we’ve seen a growth in city meeting viewership across the nine northern suburbs. Now more than ever, people want to get involved and engage with their communities through city meetings, even if it’s done from home.
The Challenge:
While many more people were watching city meetings, not all of our viewers were getting a fair viewing experience, specifically the hearing-impaired community. None of the live or recorded city meetings had closed captioning.
The NineNorth production team had to find a way to implement closed captioning so that all of our viewers could effectively watch their city meetings.
The Solution:
Last November, we were looking for software to auto-generate a transcription for closed captioning. We decided to use the programs Amazon Elemental and Amazon Transcribe. These programs automatically generate the subtitles through an AI.
We then tested the program on a previous city council meeting recording in December. We were very happy with the program’s performance of its tasks and plan to continue using it.
The Results:
Although you won’t see captions in our meeting coverage yet, we are in the process of integrating and automating the program into our system. This means that you’ll be able to watch city meetings, live or recorded, and be able to watch them with closed captioning.
Adaption Prompting:
Interested in implementing closed captioning in your city meetings? Reach out to NineNorth and let us know!
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