Captioning Services

The Vendor is required to provide to acquire captioning services for department.
- Conducts recorded webinars & trainings as well as features promotional and informational videos for its many stakeholders.- These video and audio components require transcripts, closed captioning and searchable metadata to meet accessibility requirements.
- Closed captioning (CC) is a way of displaying text on a video screen that transcribes the audio content so viewers can read what is being spoken. It’s especially designed to make videos accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Key elements of closed captioning:
• Dialogue transcription: Converts spoken words into on-screen text.
• Non-speech audio cues: Includes important sounds like [music playing], [door slams], or [applause].
• Speaker identification: Indicates who is speaking, especially when it isn’t obvious.
• Timing synchronization: Text appears on screen at the same time as the corresponding audio.
- “Closed” vs “Open” captions:
• Closed captions can be turned on or off by the viewer (e.g., via a settings menu).
• Open captions are permanently embedded in the video and always visible.
- Why closed captioning matters:
• Improves accessibility for viewers with hearing impairments.
• Helps comprehension, especially in noisy environments or for non-native speakers.
• In some contexts, it is legally required for broadcast and online video content.
- The captioning service should be able to accept a variety of common digital and webbased formats including but not limited to: MOV, WMV, M4V, AVI, FLV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4
- Must be able to intake recordings through a simple and secure file transfer site or through common file sharing programs such as but not limited to: DropBox, Google Drive, FileDrop, Sync, and YouTube.
- Transcripts and closed captioning should work seamlessly with YouTube and common social media sites including but not limited to: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
- Must be able to provide the following languages and hybrid captions - English, Spanish, French, German, ASL, English/Spanish hybrid, English/German hybrid, and English/French hybrid.
- The captioning must be done by humans and have at least 99% accuracy. Computer assistance and Artificial Intelligence is prohibited.
- The captioning service must extract metadata from the transcript for optimizing invideo searching and accessibility.
- Must make any edits requested by client.
- There must be a process by which client can edit caption files.
- Have the ability to download transcripts from the system after each captioning service request.
- Must provide searchable transcripts and metadata across video library.
- Have the ability to provide live captioning services.
- Number of minutes needed is unknown at this time; however, 12,000 minutes per year will be used in evaluation purposes.