Making Your Audio and Video Content Accessible
Transcripts
You can provide a transcript in downloadable format along with your audio or video in order to meet the needs of deaf and hard-of-hearing students. There are a number of transcription services available.
Recommended vendor: Rev
YouTube Videos
YouTube videos are typically closed-captioned, however, the automated captioning service is typically not very accurate and thus not suitable for deaf or hard-of-hearing students.
If you are putting your own videos on YouTube, it is recommended that you review and edit your transcript and captioning after it is created.
If you are using videos found on YouTube, please review the captions to determine if they are accurate. If they are not accurate, you may want to find another video source.
Panopto
Panopto is a cloud-based service that streams video and is integrated into Blackboard. Videos can be created using the Panopto Recorders or created with external software tools and uploaded into Panopto. See Video Best Practices for examples. Playback within Panopto offers the ability to offer captioning side-by-side with the video. Captions can be added manually from an existing transcript or from a caption file. Panopto Captioning Features Captions can also be added by the Panopto service for a fee. Your school may have other options for obtaining captions. Please contact your Blackboard support team for more information. For more information about Panopto, please visit University of Rochester Panopto website.
Captioning Educational Media
When your course plan includes the use of VHS, DVDs, or online and digital media, it is necessary to determine if they are closed captioned. Captioning makes media accessible to students by displaying all audio content in printed form on the screen, similar to the appearance of subtitles.
All media that is shown in the classroom or posted to a course website must be accessible to all students. Turnaround time may vary when it comes to captioning course materials; therefore, captioning course materials well before a requesting student registers for your class is a wise accessibility strategy.
Universal Benefits of Captioning
The use of captioned media provides many more benefits to diverse populations:
- Persons who are Deaf or hard of hearing must have captioned media in order to access the auditory and visual media from one location.
- Persons with learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or other cognitive impairments also benefit from the open captions supplementing the audio.
- Persons for whom English is a second or third language.
- Persons without disabilities often note that captioning helps in taking notes and improves understanding and recall.
- Anyone in the audience when variations of sound quality or surrounding noise distractions.
To caption your course material:
- For School of Arts & Sciences and Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences instructors, if your course material is not yet captioned, please contact the RCL Course Reserves team.