Bee Cave proposes closed captioning for meetings and a public engagement platform to widen outreach

Communications staff presented two technology requests: live closed-captioning for city meetings to meet ADA accessibility requirements and a public engagement platform to consolidate and analyze public input on major projects.

"The 1st 1 is for closed captioning, which provides transcripts of all meetings, all city recording meetings. This is a requirement of the ADA," Crystal said, noting the city expects the mandate to be mandatory for Bee Cave beginning April 2028 and that staff proposed starting the service Oct. 1 to phase it in early. She explained the higher cost reflects hardware (a new encoder) and human review for transcript accuracy.

Crystal also described a public engagement tool intended to aggregate in-person comments, social-media responses and online input into a single dashboard with mapping and project-based reporting. "Think of it like a town hall that's open 24 hours, 7 days a week," she said, describing IP-based location checks, tiered access for staff and council, and on-demand reporting. Council members asked how vendors prevent bots and irrelevant input; Crystal said staff would rely on established industry providers and IP/location-tracking features.

Staff requested council consider adding the tools to the October 1 budget year and said they will continue negotiating pricing and access tiers.