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Use Case
Council Meetings & Citizen Engagement
Audience
Local Community
Languages
English Spanish
Summary
With cities now mandated to offer language accessibility to citizens, the City of Vallejo was searching for a simple and accurate solution to run their council meetings in English and Spanish simultaneously. They also sought a solution to display closed captions for ADA compliance, for members of the community with a hearing impairment. In the fall of 2024, the City of Vallejo made KUDO AI Speech Translator a permanent fixture of its council meetings, with live-translated audio and subtitles available with the scan of a QR code.
The Challenge
Home to over 126,000 residents, the City of Vallejo is the second largest city in the North Bay region of the Bay Area in California. Its community includes a large Hispanic population, prompting the city council to seek a language accessibility solution that would allow citizen engagement meetings to be run in both English and Spanish simultaneously.
Despite the quality of human interpretation being high, their team found it complex and time-consuming to hire language interpreters for these frequent meetings that often went on far longer than their expected time. They also experimented with Zoom AI captions as an alternative to provide language accessibility, but ultimately decided that the quality of these captions was not good enough to be used in these important meetings. That’s when the city council turned to KUDO AI Speech Translator. Now, citizens can access council meetings in the language of their choice from their smartphones, with high-quality captions projected on screen in addition for members of the community who require assistive listening support.
Manny Angel, Media Service Specialist | City of Vallejo
The Solution
Today, the City of Vallejo uses KUDO AI for all its in-person council meetings. QR codes displayed inside the council chamber allow citizens to access real-time audio and captions in the language of their choice from their smartphone, with no downloads or account creations needed. Closed captions in English are also displayed at the front of the council chamber for citizens who would prefer not to read from their own screen, or for those who require assistive listening provisions.
Since making their council meetings accessible to the whole community, the City of Vallejo team reports increased inclusivity and engagement from citizens, and they have made KUDO AI a permanent fixture of their council meetings.
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