60 posts tagged with "Accessibility"

Starting August 17, 2026, the FCC requires manufacturers of covered apparatus and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to make closed captioning display settings "readily accessible" to individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing. The rule, codified at 47 CFR 79.103(e), defines "readily accessible" through four specific factors and applies to a broad range of devices, from televisions and set-top boxes to smartphones, tablets, and computers.

This guide covers the full scope of the requirement: what the regulation says, who must comply, what display settings must be supported, how the FCC will evaluate compliance, and what organizations that produce or distribute video content should do before the deadline.

Government entities are responsible for making their social media videos accessible under ADA Title II, even when the platform itself does not offer built-in caption support. We have added a new export option to Recap that lets you burn captions directly into the video frames, producing a file with permanently visible (open) captions that works on any platform.

The DOJ's ADA Title II final rule requires state and local government web content, including video, to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. But not every video a government entity has ever published must be made accessible by the compliance deadline. The rule defines five specific exceptions, plus additional provisions for fundamental alteration, undue burden, and minimal-impact noncompliance.

This article explains each exception, how it applies to video content, and what obligations remain even when an exception applies.

When a city posts a video to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or X, that video is government web content. Under the DOJ's ADA Title II final rule, it must meet the same WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards as content on the city's own website. The rule does not distinguish between a formal council meeting recording embedded on a .gov site and a 30-second community event clip posted to Instagram Reels.

This article covers what the rule requires for social media video, which posts are exempt and which are not, what accessible social media video looks like in practice, and how the platform-versus-content distinction works.

Your city posts a 90-second video to Facebook announcing a new recycling program. It shows an infographic with collection schedules, a map of service zones, and text overlays with phone numbers and dates. It gets shared 400 times. It has no captions, no transcript, and no audio description. Under the DOJ's ADA Title II rule, that video is a compliance gap, and it is one that cities create dozens of times per month across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X, and their own websites.

This article is for the city clerk, communications director, or media team member who already knows their city needs to make social media video accessible, but needs a practical solution they can present to a supervisor or budget director for final approval.

If you are a city clerk, city manager, or IT director at a local government with 50,000 or more residents, the ADA Title II compliance deadline for your web content is April 24, 2026. That includes every council meeting video, commission meeting recording, public hearing, and informational video on your city website or social media channels.

Many cities are discovering that their current streaming or website vendor has been slow to offer accessibility solutions, or that the quoted costs are far higher than expected. This guide is for the local government staff member who needs to get compliant quickly, practically, and affordably.

Live captions and real-time translation already remove barriers for attendees who are deaf or hard of hearing, and for those who speak a different language. But what about attendees who would benefit from hearing the translation rather than reading it? Starting today, Recap Innovations supports multi-lingual voiceover for translated live captions, powered by high-quality natural sounding text-to-speech.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted new rules requiring manufacturers of covered apparatus and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to make closed captioning display settings readily accessible to individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing. These requirements implement the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA) and take effect in August 2026. If your organization produces, distributes, or displays video content, understanding these requirements now will help you plan for compliance.

A thick accent shouldn't stand between a learner and the knowledge they need. But for many students, employees, and professionals watching video-based training, it does. When the speaker's pronunciation makes content hard to follow, learners are left rewinding, guessing at words, or giving up entirely.

Recap's AI voiceover feature offers a straightforward solution: generate a clear, natural-sounding voiceover from the transcript, in English or any of 60+ other languages.

Many video training/instruction platforms give learners a play button and a progress bar. That's it. If a student needs to revisit a single concept from a 90-minute lecture, they're stuck scrubbing through the timeline, guessing where the instructor mentioned it. If a new hire needs to find the safety protocol buried in an hour-long onboarding video, they have to watch the whole thing again.

This is the problem searchable transcripts, closed captions, and AI summaries solve.

Not all educational videos are the same, and the way you audio describe them should not be the same either. A screencast with code scrolling across the screen presents completely different challenges than a chemistry lab demonstration or a talking head over a slide deck. For example, typical reccomendations of describing all on-screen text don't work well when the entire screen is covered in code and rapidly shifts between opened files in an IDE. The visual information that matters, the pacing, and the level of detail required all change depending on the format.

This guide breaks down the most common educational video formats and explains what to prioritize, what you can safely omit, and whether standard or extended audio descriptions are the better fit. Whether you are producing descriptions manually or reviewing AI-generated output, these format-specific techniques from Recap Innovations will help you create descriptions that are accurate, useful, and well-timed.

360-degree videos are becoming more common across education, tourism, training, and entertainment. They let viewers pan, tilt, and rotate their perspective to explore an entire scene rather than watching from a fixed camera angle. But this new level of viewer control creates a unique accessibility challenge: how do you write audio descriptions for video content where every viewer may be looking at something different?

This question is coming up more frequently in accessibility communities, and for good reason. The traditional model of audio description, where a describer narrates the visual content the viewer sees, does not map neatly onto a format where there is no single "correct" view. In this guide, we break down what 360-degree video is, why it complicates audio description, and how to create descriptions that give blind and low-vision viewers equivalent access to immersive content.

Not every live event has the same captioning needs. An informal departmental meeting and a graduation commencement require very different levels of accuracy. That is why Recap Innovations now offers three distinct live captioning service tiers, including a new professional CART option with human captioners delivering 99%+ accuracy in real time.

Audio descriptions are required for pre-recorded video content under WCAG 2.1 AA and ADA Title II. They make visual information accessible to blind and low-vision viewers by narrating actions, settings, on-screen text, and other elements that are not conveyed through dialogue or sound effects. With the ADA Title II compliance deadline in April 2026, institutions managing large video libraries need to decide how to produce descriptions at scale.

There are two primary approaches: fully automated AI generation and human-authored descriptions. Each has distinct strengths, and many teams benefit from combining both. This article breaks down the trade-offs and helps you choose the right workflow for your content.

Recap Innovations already offers fully automated AI audio descriptions that can process thousands of videos with same-day turnaround. For many institutions, that is the right solution. But not every team can use AI-generated content. Some operate under data governance policies that prohibit sending video to third-party AI models. Others require human-authored descriptions for quality assurance, subject-matter accuracy, or institutional policy reasons. And some simply want a faster way to review and refine AI output before publishing.

Today we are introducing voice mode: a new way to create audio descriptions and edit transcripts by speaking instead of typing. It gives human describers the productivity benefits of automation without requiring any AI processing of video content.

Recap Innovations is pleased to announce our new Google Meet integration, bringing automated transcription, AI-powered audio descriptions, and intelligent meeting summaries to every Google Workspace, regardless of plan tier. Teams can now connect their Google Meet account to Recap and have recordings processed automatically the moment they become available, with no manual steps required.

Recap Innovations is pleased to announce our new Google Chat integration, delivering native video accessibility notifications directly into Google Workspace. Teams that rely on Google Chat as their primary collaboration hub can now receive real-time updates on transcript completions, audio description exports, voice synthesis tasks, and caption audit results, all without leaving the tools they already use every day.

Recap Innovations now supports live captioning for YouTube live streams, enabling content creators, educational institutions, and enterprises to deliver accessible broadcasts that meet WCAG 2.1 AA compliance standards.

Recap Innovations is excited to announce native support for real-time live captioning in Zoom meetings. Organizations can now deliver accurate, human-moderated captions directly to Zoom participants, combining AI speed with human precision for the highest quality accessibility experience.

Recap Innovations is expanding its live captioning platform with real-time translation capabilities, enabling viewers to access live captions in their preferred language as events happen. This breakthrough feature transforms live accessibility by serving international audiences, multilingual students, and diverse communities simultaneously during conference events, lectures, webinars, and broadcasts.