London City Councillors will meet Friday afternoon to discuss how to restore archived files that were removed from the city’s website this week, while making sure videos of their meetings and debates comply with accessibility regulations going forward.
Video records of council sessions, committee meetings, and other political debates were pulled from the city’s website and YouTube channel over a failure to comply with accessibility rules.
The videos violate the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act because they don’t have closed captioning for the hearing impaired.
“This is something that they’ve known since 2014,” Councillor Mo Salih explains, “I recently discovered it myself and have been working aggressively to have this situation rectified.”
The matter was brought forward to council on Tuesday and by Wednesday morning all of the videos had been pulled. Councillor Salih requested the special meeting in hopes of getting the videos back online as soon as possible.
It’s not known how long it might take or how much it could cost to rectify the situation.
The special council meeting is set for 3p.m. Friday afternoon.