Alameda County details language-access services and SB 707 compliance steps

Assistant Deputy County Administrator Anissa Vasoco Villabrial presented Alameda County’s current language-access infrastructure and next steps on June 15, telling the Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee how the county will comply with SB 707 before the law takes effect July 1, 2026.

Vasoco Villabrial said the county has a three-year contract with Global Language Solutions (approved March 2023 and extended through 2028) for multilingual telephone interpretation and a master contract (authorized April 2024, in effect through April 30, 2027) for in-person interpretation and document translation. "Language access is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through our main contractor, Global," she said, and noted the county also has more than 1,000 certified bilingual employees who can assist departments in real time.

The presenter showed utilization data for June 2025–May 2026, reporting that over 100 languages were requested and listing Spanish, Cantonese and Mandarin among the top languages. She described a soft launch of automatic captioning for two-way platforms and said SB 707 will add requirements, including designated areas in chambers for interpreters, facilitating connections to outside services, support for personal devices, and activation of automatic captioning on platforms such as Zoom and Teams beginning July 1.

Supervisors asked for metrics clarification: the dashboard lists an average "connect time" of roughly 11 seconds (the time it takes to reach an interpreter) and a separate average call length (minutes) for typical sessions (for example, Spanish calls averaging about 10 minutes). Staff said they will post the dashboard publicly after the meeting and can add snapshots to the AC Speaks portal. Staff also acknowledged variation across departmental websites and said ITD will work with departments to standardize access to translated pages.

Public commenters raised two main concerns: Julia Dale asked whether the county relies on Google Translate for critical health materials and proposed outcome-based benchmarking to ensure translations enable residents to access services; Kelly Abreu highlighted that county information is fragmented across many department sites and observed that only about 1,000 certified bilingual employees were listed versus a larger multilingual county population. Vasoco Villabrial responded that Google Translate is used only for uploaded agenda documents and that contractors handle formal program-document translation; she also said utilization data reflect requests for interpretation services, and that measuring whether clients ultimately received services would require department-level data.

The committee did not take formal action; staff recommended supporting the board agenda item on SB 707 the following day and preparing public-facing materials and trainings for staff.