City implements closed captioning for council meetings

March 05, 2009 12:03 pm

— ADA – In an effort to share information with as many people as possible, the city of Ada has implemented closed captioning services on council meetings conducted in the Dr. Ray L. Stout Memorial City Council Chamber inside Ada City Hall.
“This is a major communication milestone for the city,” said Ada City Manager David Hathcoat. “This enables us to bring important information to those members of our community who are deaf or have difficulty hearing. It’s very important to city staff and members of the Ada City Council that all citizens play a role in local government.”
Ada City Council meetings are regularly broadcast at 5:45 p.m. on the first and third Monday of each month on Cable One, Channel 11, the city’s government channel. To successfully view closed captioning, the closed captioning option must be activated on the viewer’s television or cable box.
The closed captioning of the council meetings is the first step in making Channel 11 accessible around the clock for all local viewers.
“We have plans to caption episodes of ‘Explore Ada’ as well,” said Mark Bratcher, the city’s public information officer. “We’ve been working on the live captioning end of the process and next we’ll turn toward offline captioning with the ultimate goal of having 100 percent of Channel 11 programming captioned.”
Hathcoat said closed captioning was also in line with meeting Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.
“The city is dedicated to ensuring all citizens are able to participate in our municipal government process,” he said. “Part of our job is to remove any and all obstacles that might stand in the way of that participation, and that’s what we plan to do.”