Cameras cover the recording
Many towns bought cameras and started streaming meetings to YouTube. That gets meetings in front of residents. It doesn't settle the accessibility question, which the Justice Department's Title II rule (28 CFR part 35, subpart H) answers with WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The compliance dates are April 26, 2027 for governments serving 50,000 people or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller governments and special districts.
The content is yours wherever it's hosted. When a town posts its meetings on a third-party platform, making that content accessible is still the town's responsibility.
Captions, live and recorded
WCAG requires captions for recorded video (success criterion 1.2.2) and for live video (1.2.4). Captions are synchronized with the picture and identify speakers and relevant sounds. A transcript posted beside the video, or the meeting minutes, doesn't replace them: a viewer needs to follow what's said as it's said.
Recorded video also needs anything important that's only shown on screen, such as a slide or a map, to be described in the audio (success criterion 1.2.5). Presenters saying what they show is the simplest way to cover it. Clerkcast doesn't add audio description.
Automatic captions
Automatic captions are a useful start, and they're how Clerkcast begins too. Where they fall short is predictable in meetings: names, street names, motions and votes, and people talking over each other. W3C's guidance is that captions need review when automation misses that kind of information.
Unreviewed automatic captions are a gray area, and the town stays responsible for them. The practical answer is a review step: someone on staff checks the captions, fixes what's wrong and records that it was done.
The player and the embed
Residents also need to be able to use the player and the page around it, from the keyboard and with a screen reader, and to find the captions. If you embed meetings on your town website, the embed is part of your site.
Requests and the archive
Two parts of a Title II approach live outside the video itself. Residents need a way to ask for captions, a correction or a document in another format, and you need a way to track and answer those requests. And older recordings may fall under the rule's exception for archived content, but only when every condition holds, including being kept in a clearly identified archive area and not changed afterwards. A playlist of past meetings doesn't establish that by itself.
What Clerkcast adds
Clerkcast works with the cameras and encoder you already have. Point your stream at Clerkcast, and it can send the same stream on to YouTube with live captions, so your channel keeps working.
| What you need | How Clerkcast handles it |
|---|---|
| Live captions during the meeting | Generated automatically and shown on your site, in embeds and, if you simulcast, on YouTube |
| Captions on the recording | Generated automatically, then reviewed and corrected by your staff in the caption editor |
| A record that someone checked them | Each verified revision records who verified it and when; the player says whether captions are verified |
| A player residents can use | An accessible player and page on your own address, built to WCAG 2.1 AA |
| A way to ask for captions or a document | A request form on every video, and a workflow for staff to answer each request |
| Older recordings | A labeled archive area with the archive conditions confirmed and the recording frozen |
| Proof of the work | A compliance record per video and a report across the library |
Your staff review captions and answer requests. Clerkcast gives them the tools and keeps the record; it doesn't do that work for them, and it's designed to help you meet Title II rather than meet it on your behalf.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Justice: Title II web rule and its extension notice
- U.S. Department of Justice: First steps toward complying with the web rule
- W3C: Understanding 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded)
- W3C: Understanding 1.2.4 Captions (Live)
This is general information, not legal advice. Last reviewed October 26, 2026.