City Hall Hansard: Transcribing City Council Discussions for greater Accessibility and Transparency - by Councillor Brad Bradford, seconded by Councillor Paul Ainslie

The City's YouTube channel launched in 2014 and has had only 65,000 views. Many advocates as well as citizens rely on this service to follow meetings. Video records are a valuable resource for anyone interested in the work happening here at City Hall but from a user standpoint, transcription opens up a world of additional access opportunities. Transcripts are easily searchable, could be more easily translated in the many languages spoken by Torontonians, and integrate with a range of modern assistive technologies for our residents using accessibility tools. In a recent conversation, someone shared a valuable perspective: "we cannot make the public trust City Council but we can take every step to ensure our actions inspire trust". This Motion takes an important step toward inspiring greater trust from the public. As we have in so many aspects of City-building - we have an opportunity to be a global leader on transparent and accessible government. With new technologies available to us and an increasing burden on the City to make ever more complex decisions, it is critical that we give our residents every possible opportunity to follow Council decision-making, understand our processes, and hold our decisions to account.

a review of the transcription services used in other jurisdictions, including the Provincial and Federal Governments; b. the cost of implementing such transcription services; c. a scan of technologies that could perform accurate time effective transcription services; and d. an analysis of the equity impact of transcription services.