If you work in communications for a BC municipality, chances are you have already had this conversation internally: is our public-facing video actually accessible? The Accessible British Columbia Act, passed in 2021, named local governments among the more than 750 public sector organizations required to identify, remove, and prevent barriers — including barriers in the digital content residents rely on to understand their city. Video is one of the most visible pieces of that content, and one of the easiest to get right if accessibility is part of the plan from the first production call rather than an afterthought once the edit is locked.
What the Accessible BC Act Means for Local Government Video
Municipalities across the province are required to develop accessibility plans, stand up accessibility committees, and create a real channel for public feedback on barriers — and increasingly, that review extends to the videos a city publishes. The Province of BC’s own guidance on accessible digital content is direct about what that means for time-based media: captions for residents who are deaf or hard of hearing, or who are simply watching on mute in a public space; transcripts for screen readers; and plain, clear language so a budget explainer or infrastructure update is understood on the first watch, not the third.
For municipal communications teams, that means every video on the docket — a Mayor’s message, a budget explainer, an infrastructure update, a staff celebration piece — is now also an accessibility decision, whether or not anyone frames it that way at the kickoff meeting.
Captioning Isn’t New to Us — It’s Where We Started
Before founding Distill Media, Curtis Allen spent nearly a decade as a broadcast journalist at CTV Vancouver and CJFC-TV in Kamloops. Accurate captions and clean, deliberate audio have been standard practice in TV newsrooms for decades, long before it was a legal requirement anywhere — because broadcasters have always served viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, watching with the sound off, or relying on a caption bar to follow a story in a noisy room. That instinct doesn’t get left behind when a project moves from a newsroom to a municipal video. It shows up in how we script, how we record audio, and how we pace an edit so the message lands whether it’s being watched, read, or captioned.
Building Accessibility Into the Process, Not Bolting It On After
Every Distill Media project starts with a pre-production scripting session, and that’s the cheapest, easiest point to flag anything an accessibility review will care about later: jargon that needs plain-language alternatives, on-screen text that needs to be legible and unhurried, and pacing that gives a captioner or a viewer relying on captions enough time to keep up. Filming with clean, isolated audio — something we already prioritize for broadcast-quality sound — also happens to be exactly what makes accurate captioning fast and affordable afterward, whether your team handles captioning in-house or sends it to a vendor.
This isn’t a one-size-fits-all checklist, because accessibility means something different depending on the video. A Mayor’s message built on public trust needs accurate captions and a clean transcript above almost everything else. A technical infrastructure explainer needs plain language working alongside the visuals so the “why” doesn’t get lost in the engineering. A staff celebration piece needs to be watchable and understandable whether or not the sound is on. We’ve produced well over 200 videos for local governments in BC across exactly this range, and treating accessibility as part of the creative brief — not a compliance step tacked on after delivery — is simply part of doing that work properly.
What This Looks Like for Your Next Project
If your municipality is reviewing its accessibility plan this year, or you simply want your next public information video to hold up to scrutiny without a scramble before publish, the easiest fix is raising it on the very first call. Tell us who on your team needs to sign off on accessibility before a video goes live, and we’ll build the production and edit around it from day one.
Learn more about how we work with local governments across BC on our municipal video production page, or reach out directly to talk through your next project.
