Language access in Anchorage gets a reset

by sdmn

Anchorage officials say rebuilding trust, consistency and awareness
​is central to the municipality’s renewed language access efforts.

The Municipality of Anchorage is rebuilding its language access program after years of uneven implementation across departments, according to officials from the Office of Equity & Inclusion, who say the effort has focused as much on institutional awareness as on interpretation services themselves. The municipality’s 2025 report describes the past year as a period of reconstruction following outdated procedures, inactive interpreter accounts and inconsistent training across municipal government. According to the report, municipality-wide language access training had not taken place since 2021, and several departments either lacked updated plans or were uncertain about existing procedures.

“What we discovered across the municipality is that people were just not really familiar,” said Lupe Chavez, administrative officer for the Office of Equity & Inclusion and manager of the municipality’s language access program in an interview with SDMN. “We had the policy, we had the language access plan, and employees across the municipality were meant to be aware of this so that we could provide interpreters and translators for people that needed them.”

Chief Equity Officer Kim Waller said the municipality moved quickly to standardize the system after the current administration took office. The municipality designated language access representatives in each department and conducted trainings on interpretation procedures, federal requirements and communication with residents who have limited English proficiency or residents who are deaf or hard of hearing. Officials also renewed the municipality’s contract with LanguageLine, a national interpretation service, while adding video remote interpreting technology for sign language services. “We quickly learned that there were shortcomings with language access in the municipality,” Waller said to SDMN. “We were proud to report that we were federally compliant for the first time since 2020 with language access.”

The Office of Equity & Inclusion has also begun tracking interpretation usage across departments as a way to measure how the system is functioning across municipal services. Chavez said the municipality recorded roughly 18,000 minutes of interpretation services last year, with the Anchorage Health Department alone requesting services in 34 languages. The report notes that Anchorage’s language access needs extend far beyond Spanish and include languages such as Somali, Korean, Tagalog, Arabic, Swahili and American Sign Language.

Officials say public awareness remains one of the program’s central challenges. The municipality has distributed posters in public-facing offices, expanded online language access resources and created complaint forms intended to improve feedback and accountability. Chavez said the municipality wants residents to feel comfortable requesting interpretation services, while Waller said long-term success will depend on continued trust and public engagement.

​ “This work moves at the speed of trust,” Waller said. “If there are ways that we can better serve the community and better meet your language access needs, we absolutely want to know about that.”