Before submitting: The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) requires the Digital Stewardship Supplementary Information Form for any project that creates digital content or software. If you are applying for federal funds to implement Capption, you must include this form. Replace all bracketed text with your institution's specifics.
Part I. Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights
A.1 What will be the copyright or intellectual property status of the content you intend to create? Will you assign a Creative Commons license to the content?
[Museum Name] retains full copyright and ownership of all original exhibit text, translations, and educational material uploaded into the Capption system. Capption claims no intellectual property rights over our institutional content. Because this project serves as a public accessibility tool, the digital products (translated text and formatted audio descriptions) will be made available to the public free of charge, with no paywalls or required user accounts. We will apply a [Insert Creative Commons License, e.g., CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs)] license to the digital interpretive content to encourage educational use while protecting the integrity of the original curatorial work.
A.2 What ownership rights will your organization assert over the new digital content, and what conditions will you impose on access and use?
[Museum Name] asserts primary ownership over the interpretive content. We impose zero access conditions on our visitors: the digital resources will be freely accessible on-site to any visitor with a smartphone. Visitors will be notified of these resources via instructional signage adjacent to the physical exhibits, prompting them to tap their device to access the content.
A.3 Will you create any content or products which may involve privacy concerns, require obtaining permissions or rights, or raise any cultural sensitivities?
No. The platform used to deploy this content (Capption) is designed with strict privacy safeguards. It does not require user accounts or collect any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from our visitors. All usage analytics provided back to the museum are strictly anonymized and aggregated.
Part II: Projects Creating Digital Content
A.1 Describe the digital content you will create and the quantities of each type and format you will use.
We will digitize, format, and translate interpretive labels and context for [number or range] core exhibits. This includes generating hyperlegible digital text, machine- and human-translated text in up to 136 languages, and screen-reader optimized descriptions. Specific exhibits may include audio and video content.
A.2 List the equipment and software that you will use to create the content or the name of the service provider who will perform the work.
The content will be authored and managed by museum staff using Capption's web-based Content Management System (CMS). The physical deployment will utilize NFC (Near Field Communication) placards with proprietary Capption encoding. We will utilize Capption's Professional Services team for the initial content data ingestion, formatting, testing, and tag installation.
A.3 List all the digital file formats you plan to create, along with the relevant information on the appropriate quality standards.
The digital content will be authored in Markdown and stored securely in JSON. All digital outputs are engineered to comply strictly with WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards, ensuring maximum contrast, scalable typography (utilizing the Braille Institute's hyperlegible font), and native compatibility with iOS and Android screen readers (VoiceOver and TalkBack). Content payloads are architected as small as possible for maximum end-user performance.
B.1 Describe your quality control plan (i.e., how you will monitor and evaluate your workflow and products).
Our [Title/Project Director] will oversee the workflow. Curatorial staff will review the digital formatting of all English-language text prior to deployment. Once the Capption tags are installed on-site, our team will conduct live Quality Assurance (QA) testing across multiple devices (iOS and Android) to verify that platform availability, system performance, user settings inheritance, accessibility, translation, and multimedia all function seamlessly.
B.2 Describe your plan for preserving and maintaining digital assets during and after the grant period.
All digital assets are hosted on Capption's redundant, US-based cloud infrastructure with automated daily backups. Because Capption is a fully managed SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, [Museum Name] does not need to allocate internal IT resources or server space to preserve the data. Following the grant period, the museum will absorb Capption's fixed annual software licensing fee into its standard operating budget to ensure long-term preservation and continuous public access without requiring ongoing federal funds.
C.1 Describe how you will produce metadata. Specify which standards you will use.
Capption conveys pre-created descriptive and administrative exhibit metadata to our visitors and does not generate object metadata (but does generate technical metadata required for the service's function). [Museum Name] exhibit records map loosely to Dublin Core standards (Title, Creator, Description, Language). Language selection metadata adheres to ISO 639-1 language codes to ensure proper translation routing.
C.2 Explain your strategy for preserving and maintaining metadata created and/or collected.
All metadata is inextricably linked to the primary digital assets within the Capption database architecture. It will be preserved and backed up simultaneously with the core content via Capption's cloud backups.
C.3 Explain what metadata sharing and/or other strategies you will use to facilitate widespread discovery.
Capption focuses on on-site, physical accessibility. A visitor's content discovery is inherently local and discovered dynamically throughout their time on site, then accessed when a visitor taps their smartphone to an exhibit's or gallery's physical NFC tag.
D.1 Describe how you will make the digital content available to the public. Include details such as the delivery strategy and underlying hardware/software platforms.
Content is delivered openly to the public on-site via a "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) model. Visitors tap their smartphone against an exhibit tag to launch the content via the Capption Android app, iOS App Clip, or via their standard mobile web browser (Safari, Chrome) as a fallback. There is no hardware for the museum to manage and nothing special required beyond a standard smartphone.
D.2 Provide URL(s) for any examples of previous digital collections or content your organization has created.
[Insert a link to your museum's current online collection, or link to Capption's demo at: https://capption.com/demo.html]
Part III. Projects Creating New Software Tools or Applications
(Note: Because Capption is a pre-existing commercial SaaS platform, you are not using federal funds to "create new software." However, if your grant officer requires this section to be filled out regarding the deployment of the Capption technology, start with the following language).
A.1 Describe the software tool or electronic system you intend to create, including a summary of the major functions.
Capption delivers instant exhibit accessibility. With a single phone tap, visitors receive multimedia content translated into their language, formatted for their exact needs. Capption shatters access barriers for aging, non-native, low-vision, mobility-impaired, and otherwise inconvenienced guests. A solo curator can fully Capption a 30-work exhibit in 45 minutes.
A.2 List other existing digital tools that wholly or partially perform the same functions, and explain how the tool or system you will create is different.
Traditional solutions include downloadable custom museum apps, printed alternate language guides, QR-code activated mobile webpages, and physical audio devices. Capption eliminates the stress-inducing, engagement-crushing friction of past methods; one smartphone tap delivers exhibit content in a user-specific format tailored for their consumption preferences. No waiting, no searching, no fiddling—just exhibit content, right now, while they're still curious.
B.1 List the programming languages, platforms, software, or other applications you will use.
Capption payloads utilize standard JSON and Markdown hosted on secure US-based content delivery networks. Capption interfaces employ bespoke native OS code (Swift in iOS, Kotlin in Android, HTML/CSS/JS web fallback) crafted to be as small, performant, and perfectly-integrated as possible.
B.2 Describe how the intended software or system will extend or interoperate with other existing software applications or systems.
Capption is designed to operate as a standalone accessibility layer, requiring no complex API integrations with any of our existing systems and requires no special allowances on our networks, thereby mitigating IT security risks and deployment delays.
B.3 Describe any underlying additional software or system dependencies necessary to run the new software.
No additional dependencies needed.
B.4 Describe the processes you will use for development documentation and for maintaining and updating technical documentation for users.
As a managed platform, Capption provides and maintains all technical documentation, onboarding materials, and a continually updated knowledge base for museum staff.
B.5 Provide URL(s) for examples of any previous software tools or systems your organization has created.
Product documentation and examples can be found at https://capption.com.
C.1 We expect applicants seeking federal funds for software to develop and release these products as open source software. What ownership rights will your organization assert over the new software and what conditions will you impose on the access and use?
(Note: Use this answer to justify why the software is NOT open source). Capption is a proprietary, commercial SaaS product. The vendor retains all intellectual property rights to their software codebase. We selected a commercial SaaS solution rather than building an open-source tool to mitigate the risk of "shelfware"—ensuring the platform receives continuous security updates, maintenance, and feature enhancements without requiring the museum to hire dedicated developers or rely on future federal funding to maintain a custom open-source codebase.
C.2 Describe how you will make the software or system available to the public and/or its intended users.
Capption's interface will be available to all museum visitors instantly via one tap of their personal smartphone.
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