King County TV Automates Meeting Audio Description Without Adding Staff

County government serving greater Seattle brings MediaScribe Narrate to government meeting workflow, keeping WCAG-aligned video paced to full meeting schedule.

KING COUNTY, WA, UNITED STATES, October 20, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- King County TV, the government television station for one of the largest county governments in the country, adopted an automated audio description workflow for its council and committee meeting coverage using MediaScribe Narrate, Tightrope Media Systems' audio description tool for pre-recorded and on-demand video, as the county works to meet ADA Title II digital accessibility requirements.

King County TV covers four to six council and committee meetings a week, a schedule that adds up to ten to twelve hours of video, produced by a small AV and communications team. As the team worked through the steps of bringing their government meeting video into compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines, they faced the challenge of how to avoid adding a labor-intensive accessibility workflow to an already full production schedule for their small team.

Three things about MediaScribe stood out to the team. It runs entirely in the cloud, so adding audio description didn't mean installing any additional hardware. It holds up against multi-hour meeting files, not just short clips. And it leaves the station with an editable, human reviewable output rather than a finished, unchangeable track.

MediaScribe also integrates directly with the Cablecast Automation environment King County TV already uses to publish its meeting video, so audio description became a small step inside an existing workflow rather than a separate system to manage. "The integration with Cablecast is really good," said Brian Starr, AV Technology Manager for King County TV. "Once it's done and we publish it, it goes to the web. It's pretty seamless."

The King County TV team took their time to find the accessibility workflow that would work best for their staff capacity, workload, and budget, first consulting with counterparts at other Washington stations, including Yakima and Tacoma. They also brought in Rooted in Rights, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on accessible media, and made use of Tightrope’s free educational resources as well. "Tightrope webinars on audio description were some of the only real education on video accessibility available anywhere," said Kimberly Hill, Station Manager for King County TV. "That guidance made a real difference for us."

Not every station facing the same requirement has reached for automation. Starr said colleagues at other stations have told him they plan to have staff describe meetings themselves rather than adopt a dedicated tool. King County TV took a partial run at that path too, building accessible PowerPoint templates, adapted from the University of Washington's accessibility resources, so meeting slides carry their own accessible text for screen readers. That solved part of the problem, but not the volume of a ten-to-twelve-hour meeting week. "Describing hours of meeting content well takes real storytelling skill, and staff reports aren't exactly built for that," Starr said. "Automating it means we get consistent audio description without asking our team to become professional narrators on top of everything else."

MediaScribe takes on the majority of the cognitive load for small teams by doing the work of detecting gaps, analyzing the video, and filing them with right-sized descriptions that staff can review, easily correct if needed, and publish. MediaScribe is tuned to recognize common events in a government meeting, adding extra efficiency for teams reviewing very long recordings. Once a meeting clears review, MediaScribe renders it into the formats King County TV's other channels need: an MP4 carrying both the original audio track and a mixed track with description, standalone audio files with the description track alone or mixed with the source audio, and a plain text transcript with visual descriptions. That range of outputs lets a single processed meeting feed the station's Cablecast VOD page and its public transcript downloads.

"Our video on demand page is live and accessible before other public channels even have the meeting posted," Starr said. "When residents or staff ask where to find a meeting, we send them our link, because it's WCAG compliant and available right away."

About Tightrope Media Systems
For more than 25 years, Tightrope Media Systems has provided video distribution and media accessibility solutions that help government and community organizations deliver timely messaging to the right people, in the right place, at the right time. Its Cablecast multiplatform playout automation simplifies video distribution for cable channels, websites, and mobile and over-the-top streaming devices. Its MediaScribe platform provides comprehensive video accessibility for live and on-demand content, including live captions, real-time translation, meeting transcription, and audio descriptions, helping government teams meet ADA Title II compliance requirements. Learn more at www.trms.com or call (612) 866-4118.

Michelle Alimoradi
Tightrope Media Systems
+1 612-895-1679 ext. 248
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