STAFF REPORT TO THE CITY COUNCIL
DATE: Regular Meeting of May 10, 2022
TO: Members of the City Council
VIA: Dante Hall, City Manager
SUBMITTED BY: Lauren Berges, City Clerk
SUBJECT: Auto Captioning and Language Translation for Public Meetings RECOMMENDED ACTION: It is recommended that the City Council of the City of Hercules approve by resolution a proposal from Link Electronics for automated closed captioning and translation equipment in an amount not to exceed $49,617.09 and to appropriate the necessary funding.
FISCAL IMPACT OF RECOMMENDATION:
Link Electronics has provided a proposed quote for the ACE 2000 Automated Closed Captioning system. The total one-time cost is $49,617.09. The funds are to be provided using the Public, Education, and Governmental (PEG) fees the City receives annually. As of June 30, 2021, the General Fund reserved the remaining available PEG fee of $70,000. Under federal law, PEG Fees may only be used for capital costs associated with PEG access facilities and equipment. Closed captioning system upgrades would be included under this requirement.
With the ACE Series from Link Electronics, there are no required subscription service charges and no emergency or after-hours fees. However, if 24/7 support and language updates are needed after the initial year, an annual fee would apply. If deemed necessary, future annual fees would apply and be included within future budgets.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The City of Hercules continues to improve council chamber web-based meeting integration and video/audio upgrades. Currently, public meetings are being held in-person while simultaneously broadcasting through several different mediums (Zoom, Granicus web streaming, and local public access television) to promote civic engagement and accommodate the use of virtual meetings due to COVID-19.
The City has been considering the implementation of a closed captioning system as a next step for growing our public meeting engagement. Although the city currently adds subtitles to videos through Zoom, we need to sufficiently reach our web streaming and local public access channel with the same access to captioning. There are two options, one is live closed captioning which would consist of hiring a person or vendor to transcribe the live audio; or two, purchase equipment that performs fully automated, broadcast compliant, live closed captioning. Either option requires system hardware.
DISCUSSION:
The City has considered different products and/or software systems to integrate closed captioning programming. We currently use Legistar (A Granicus owned software) to host our legislative management and run our web streaming during public meetings.
Legistar doesn’t have the full ability to take on a new platform integration for closed captioning. Their solution is for us to utilize VITAC Live Captioning, a third party vendor. Live closed captioning in this sense is having a person transcribe the audio manually. The hourly rate for such services is approximately $132 per hour based on a projection of 150 hours of needed services. At this rate, the annual fees could reach approximately $20,000 or more depending on how many hours each of our Council, Commission, and Committee meetings actually require for live transcription.
Alternatively, the ACE 2000 series is a live captioning solution in the form of a server and can perform fully automated, broadcast compliant, closed captioning for live broadcasts and streaming content with a documented 95% accuracy. The ACE series uses a highly advanced linguistics algorithm that converts speech into text and can be overlayed in all feeds simultaneously.
For the one-time cost this system includes:
· Web-based user interface
· Live Broadcasting captioning (can broadcast in up to two languages only) · Translation from English/Spanish – Spanish/English · Timestamped transcript
· Ability for speaker identification
The system does not need to be “taught” and is updated regularly. Words can be manually entered into the system's dictionary to increase the ACE’s accuracy. The ACE can identify individual speakers to provide a speaker ID with the automatic closed captions.
The ACE 2000 system is consistent with the City of Hercules commitment to open and transparent government and the inclusion of any members of the public who wish to observe and/or participate however they choose.
ATTACHMENTS:
Resolution
Ace 2000 Proposal with description
Date Page 1