What's Happening in Lansing, MI…

Andy Schor, Lansing’s mayor, recently pointed out the new improvements that have been made to make it easier to access meetings of the city council, as well as other materials made by the Lansing Public Media Center. The price tag on these investments was more than $100,000.

Improvements to access to the council meetings including adding captions to all videos made of the proceedings, and installing assistive listening devices in the Chamber itself, for use by those with hearing impairments.

Schor explained that he was committed to transparency by making certain all Lansing residents have access to the workings of their government, and making these improvements will allow individuals who are hard of hearing, deafblind, or deaf to have that access. Officials could use flyer printing to alert residents to upcoming changes like this.

The city began making these improvements during the 2018 budget year, and plans to continue implementing them in the future. The recordings of the council meetings captioned will be rebroadcast, or archived on the web. At present, Lansing does not have the ability to add captions to a live broadcast, but is waiting an upgrade to the software that will allow it to do so.

In addition, Schor also plans to add captions to the public access shows produced by the city, which are now archived, as well as events related the government currently on the Lansing website.