Real-Time closed captioning for Council and Committee Meetings
March 12, 2019

Real-time closed captioning is now available for all council and committee meetings held in City Hall’s Council Chamber and the River Valley Room. Large screen TV’s in these rooms will display spoken words as text, on screen, in real-time.

The same real-time captioning will be shown on edmonton.ca via the live-stream of the session. Sessions or parts of a session held in private are not captioned.

The same real-time captioning will be shown on Council and Committee meetings online video live stream as well on archived video of the meetings that are linked to the minutes of each meeting . Sessions or parts of a session held in private are not captioned.

“Adding the service is part of the City’s commitment to improving accessibility to municipal information,” said Denis Beaudry, Deputy City Clerk. “Those who are hard of hearing or deaf and others who have been in Council Chamber during testing, feel the service helps them to follow what was being said in the session.”

The City Clerk's office worked closely with the  Accessibility Advisory Committee, who encouraged and supported the City’s efforts to make this service available.

With real-time closed captioning, a captioner listens to the proceedings either onsite or from another location, and instantaneously transcribes the spoken word to text using specialized software and equipment. Real-time closed captioning, means that the text is added immediately and not after as in some closed captioning. 

National Captioning Canada has been contracted to provide this service.

The City has several services available for those who are hard of hearing or deaf posted on edmonton.ca/hardofhearingordeaf.

Media contact:  
Communications Advisor
780-944-5704