Daytona Beach Approves Video Stream Settlement

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Daytona Beach, FL - A day after two of its incumbents were reelected, the Daytona Beach City Commission signs off on a settlement to a lawsuit which ended online streaming of its meetings a month ago.

Eddie Sierra - a deaf man who lives in South Florida - and his attorney are poised to collect over $10,000 to end his legal challenge against Daytona Beach following tonight's (November 8th) unanimous vote.

Sierra has filed similar lawsuits against other cities, claiming that closed captioning needs to be provided during those online streams for those who are hard of hearing.

Daytona Beach officials have agreed to make closed captioning available by July of next year, at which point the meetings will be streamed online again.

Meetings which were streamed online prior to the lawsuit will not need to be closed captioned, according to the settlement terms.

In a related move, Daytona Beach commissioners also agreed 7-0 to amend its existing contract with Swagit Productions LLC, the company which provides the city's video streaming services. That change will allow the city to buy equipment needed to provide closed captioning live and on-demand at a cost of $46,260 for next fiscal year.

$23,760 of that money is one-time costs for system components and installation, while the remainder ($22,500) will be an annual cost to provide closed captioning for up to 75 meetings a year.

Swagit will bill the City of Daytona Beach $35,688 yearly when you include the annual closed captioning fee and $13,188 for providing the video stream as well as indexing and archiving services.

This lawsuit did not affect the meetings being aired live on Daytona Beach TV, the city-run cable access channel.