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Norwood committee discusses Spanish translations and video caption accuracy for meetings
Summary
Council members discussed whether to make meeting materials and minutes available in Spanish, limits on in-house translation capacity, and the accuracy limits of automated captions on posted meeting videos.
Norwood officials raised accessibility issues, including Spanish translations of meeting materials and the accuracy of automatically generated captions on posted meeting videos.
Council members noted the city does not currently have a dedicated, paid bilingual translator on staff and that some documents are translated informally when a bilingual city employee volunteers to do so. Staff said, “We currently don't have anyone with the city who is, like, a certified translator,” and that the city is not paying a translator for regular document production.
Committee members suggested checking whether the city's web-hosted agenda and minutes are provided as HTML (which supports browser translation tools) rather than as PDFs, and whether the city’s video-hosting closed captions can be improved. Staff noted the current automated captions are “not good” and should not be relied upon for accurate accessibility. The group agreed this topic would require a broader accessibility conversation and follow-up with administration about resources and options.
No formal action was taken; staff and council members agreed to investigate possible translation workflows and whether the city can or should budget for professional translation or live captioning where needed.
