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Accessibility for Academics
Reasons to Optimize Video for Accessibility
Reasons to Optimize Video for Accessibility
By far one of the most useful tools, video is an expectation in any hybrid or online course. Flipped classrooms also take advantage of this tool.
However, students that may be hard of hearing will have a difficult time getting the full impact of the video as their peers do without Closed Captions. This is especially true if you are doing a screen capture and do not record your face.
Additionally, even students that are not hard of hearing may find Closed Captions to be a boon. These students can then view your video on their commute or when they need to be quiet for whatever reason.
What are Captions?
What are Captions?
Captions are typically text that reflects sound on a video. Sound typically means "spoken word" but if you also use other sounds to help explain something (ex., you are explaining the big bang and clap your hands together to emphasize the explosion), you must add those to your captions as well.
Here are some general rules and tips when dealing with Closed Captions:
Captions should reflect the sound as accurately as possible
This typically means what is spoken, but can also relate to sounds that are used to help understand what is going on
This tip is also the most important as even a slight misspelling of a word can have a big impact on the meaning of the word and the overall meaning of the sentence
No more than 2 lines of captions at a time
No more than 30-32 characters per line (give or take a few characters)
Sentences should start on a new line
Captions should be at least 1 second long but no more than 7 seconds per caption
Remove filler words
Typically, automatically generated (also known as "machine" or "computer" generated) captions remove filler words without intervention from you. However, sometimes it does not catch all of them or converts them to other words.
Additionally, sometimes you need to keep filler words because it was needed to explain something (ex, the captions for the tutorial below will have "uh" and "uhm" to emphasize a point about filler words). So, this automatic removal is not always a good thing.
Machine-generated captions are not reliable enough
As stated previously, captions must be as accurate as possible (99% accurate is the expectation, most machine captions are much less than that).
Sometimes we mumble, cough, sneeze, or another sound drowns out what we are saying, making it difficult for the automated captioning system to accurately figure out what we said
Did you know?
Did you know?
Panopto uses machine-generated captions. Their algorithm does a good job on its own. However, it still needs help as it is not entirely accurate.
If you find that you are using an uncommon word or a name, you can request it to be added to the Panopto Captions Dictionary. The machine captions will be more accurate whenever it "hears" that word in subsequent videos (but will still need to be manually reviewed for accuracy).
Editing Captions in Panopto
Editing Captions in Panopto
Go to the course that you have a video you want to edit the captions on
Click on the Panopto link in the course navbar
Hover over the video that you want to edit the Captions of
Click on the Edit icon
Click on Captions in the left-hand sidebar
Edit captions
When should I Caption?
When should I Caption?
Any time that you make a video, you should be manually checking the captions and following the tips outlined above. This is particularly true if you are contacted by the Office of Student Accessibility and Support, which will typically only contact you if there is a student of concern. In that case, work with the Office of Student Accessibility and Support to see what resources they can offer to help.
With that said, there is only so much time in the day and lectures are typically long. Here are some recommendations:
Create and adhere as closely as possible to a Script. This can be used as a transcript which, often, can be used to supplement Captions.
Focus on videos that you plan on re-using. This will, later down the road, free up time for you to edit the captions of other videos.
Break lectures into smaller "chunks".
Find natural breaks in your lecture and cut it there. This will allow you to focus on the more important parts of your lecture.
For some, downloading the captions of your video may be easier. Then edit your captions in a simple text editor like NotePad (Windows) or Text Wrangler (Mac). Then, re-upload and edit the timings as needed.
NOTE: while the two primary forms of captions are VTT and SRT, Panopto exports and will accept TXT files that look very similar. Regardless of the file type, the same tips apply.
Keep in mind, when editing captions this way, you need to be very careful. Otherwise, you may have issues trying to upload them.
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