Captioning Services

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is hereby seeking capability statements from Small Business Administration (SBA) certified 8(a) businesses for Captioning Services: audio/video description; and translation and transcription of content to NASA GSFC. It is to be understood that content developed by NASA will have some vocabulary and terminology that is specific to NASA missions, the government, and industry. The information below provides an overview of the services. Captioning Services: These services are to provide open and closed captioning of verbal and auditory information for Deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers. Content is derived from live and pre-recorded material that is submitted electronically to a vendor via a large file transfer system. The following are three major rules that have been adopted by GSFC and mirror the Federal Communication Commission's guidelines for captioning services. Accurate: Captions must match the spoken words in the dialogue and convey background noises and other sounds to the fullest extent possible. Synchronous: Captions must coincide with their corresponding spoken words and sounds to the greatest extent possible and must be displayed on the screen at a speed that can be read by viewers. Complete: Captions must run from the beginning to the end of the program to the fullest extent possible. Properly placed: Captions should not block other important visual content on the screen, overlap one another or run off the edge of the video screen. Reference FCC Closed Captioning Consumer Guide and 47 C.F.R. - 79.1 Descriptive Video Service (DVS): Video description is audio-narrated descriptions of a television program's key visual elements. These descriptions are inserted into natural pauses in the program's dialogue. Video description makes television programming more accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired. This services uses voiceover talent that can be streamed directly from a primary video or as a separate channel. Reference FCC Video Description Consumer Guide and 47 C.F.R. - 79.3 Transcription & Translation Services: Provides accurate forward and reverse translation of content containing general and technical material from various languages such as English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Mandarin, and French. Material will primarily be written, however, vendors must also have the capacity to translate/transcribe verbal information in an accurate and timely manner. NASA is seeking capability statements from interested parties from all SBA 8(a) certified firms for the purpose of determining the appropriate level of competition and/or small business subcontracting goals for this requirement. The Government reserves the right to consider a SBA 8(a) business set-aside based on responses hereto. No solicitation exists at this time; therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized in FedBizOpps. It is the potential offeror's responsibility to monitor fbo.gov for the release of any solicitation of synopsis. Interested offerors/vendors having the required specialized capabilities to meet the above should submit a capability statement of four (4) pages or less indicating the ability to perform all aspects of the effort described herein. Responses must include the following: Name and address of firm; size of business; average annual revenue for the past three years; number of employees; ownership; all types of small business categories for which they qualify for (i;e., 8(a), WOSB, VOSB, SDVOSB, HUBZone, SDB, etc.): number of years in business; affiliate information: parent company, joint venture partners; accounting system approval status (complete, pending [identify tentative date for which approval will be complete], no approved accounting ); and potential teaming partners. Small Businesses interested in this opportunity may decide to partner in a joint venture with other 8(a) small businesses. All responses are due 15 days after this sources sought notice is posted, by 4:30PM to the Contract Specialist via email at Dorrence.A.Levy@nasa.gov. This sources sought notice is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government, not will the Government pay for the information submitted in response to this notice.