Live captioning services can look alike in a demo. These 12 questions help clerks, IT staff and city managers compare them on the things that matter once meetings are actually running.
Setup and equipment
1. Do we need new hardware?
Ask exactly what you need to buy, install or maintain. Some services require dedicated caption equipment. SentraCaptions is added as one more destination on the encoder you already stream with, such as Pearl, OBS or vMix, so there is no new hardware.
2. How does audio get to the service?
Ask which protocols are supported and whether your current stream is affected. SentraCaptions accepts RTMP or SRT, and your existing destinations stay as they are. See Sending meeting audio to live captions over RTMP or SRT.
3. Can we run more than one meeting at once?
If your council and a commission ever meet at the same time, or you have more than one room, this matters. With SentraCaptions, several rooms or meetings can run at once, each with its own screen and link.
What residents see
4. How quickly do captions appear?
Ask to see it live, not just recorded. SentraCaptions captions appear about one second after speech, and the sentence in progress updates live.
5. Where can people read captions?
Think about people in the chamber, in the lobby and at home. SentraCaptions provides a full-screen chamber screen for the TV in the chamber or lobby, with one or more languages side by side, the meeting title, a clock and a QR code. Residents scan the code to read along on a phone page in their language at their own text size, with no app and no sign-in. Captions in one language can also be sent to your YouTube Live stream.
6. Are automatic captions clearly labeled?
Residents should know what they're reading. Every SentraCaptions screen labels the captions as automatic and says they may contain errors. Ask other vendors how they handle this.
Languages and accuracy
7. Which languages are supported, and how many per meeting?
Get the actual list and check it against your community. SentraCaptions supports 75 languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Korean, Armenian, Persian (Farsi), Punjabi, Arabic, Hindi and Russian, with up to 8 per meeting; the full list is on the features page. Hmong and Khmer are not supported, so if your community needs those, plan for other options.
8. How do we get local names right?
Council member names, streets, neighborhoods and program names are where automatic captions most often stumble. SentraCaptions lets you build a glossary of local names so captions spell them right. See Getting local names right: building a caption glossary.
Be cautious of any vendor that promises perfect accuracy. Ask to test with your own recordings instead.
Running the meeting
9. What happens during recess and closed session?
Ask whether you can pause, and what happens while paused. With SentraCaptions, nothing is captioned, translated, stored or billed while paused, and the screens show "Paused".
10. Does it work with our agenda and meeting software?
Ask whether the service connects to the system your clerks already use, or offers an API. SentraCaptions has an API for platforms to create a meeting, stream to it, read captions as JSON or Server-Sent Events, and receive a webhook when it ends.
With CivicCA, captioning starts when the meeting starts and pauses for recess and closed session. Captions show on the CivicCA dais display, public portal and residents' phones, and transcripts and subtitle files can go with the meeting video.
After the meeting and cost
11. What do we get afterward?
Ask about formats and languages. SentraCaptions provides transcripts in every language as TXT or SRT (subtitle) files. SRT files can be added to posted recordings. Keep in mind that transcripts are not official minutes, though they can help staff prepare them. See Using meeting transcripts for minutes and the record.
12. How is pricing structured?
Ask what drives the bill: hours, languages, viewers, hardware, or minimum commitments. SentraCaptions pricing is extremely competitive, with no per-viewer fees and no hardware. You can buy minutes as you need them or prepay, and paused time isn't used. Quotes are based on your hours of meetings and number of languages. See Budgeting for live captions: what drives the cost.
Questions to ask yourselves, too
A few questions are for your own team rather than the vendor:
- What are we trying to support? SB 707 does not itself require live captions, but captions and translation are a practical way to support its language-access and participation goals. The ADA Title II web rule has compliance dates in 2027 and 2028. Check with your city attorney or county counsel about your obligations.
- How will we handle CART requests? Automatic captions don't replace CART in every situation. If a deaf resident requests CART as an accommodation, your agency should consider it. See Automatic captions and CART: when each makes sense.
- Who will run it? Decide whether clerks, IT or AV staff own setup, the glossary and pausing.
Next steps
- Features
- Pricing
- Security
- Developers and API
- CivicCA
- Contact us to set up a test with your own meeting audio