Using AI-powered technology, Nebraska Public Media now delivers live bilingual captions for legislative debates and hearings—making civic engagement more accessible than ever.
Beginning this session, Nebraska Public Media is expanding public access to legislative floor debate and committee hearings by offering closed captioning in Spanish, as well as in English. The addition is a result of Legislative Bill 254.
Powered by artificial intelligence, new technology integrates closed captioning and real-time translation, providing nearly 100 percent accuracy. It transforms a resource-intensive process into an efficient, automated solution to document local government.
Mark Weakly, chief engineer for government services, spearheaded the project, completing it well ahead of the legislative deadline.
“The system does a phenomenal job of interpreting speech patterns, including things like accents, hesitations, pacing and variations in how people speak. We’ve trained it to be specific to legislative proceedings with a goal of reaching a wider viewing audience,” said Weakly.