Make audiovisual material understandable for everyone
Activate subtitles on videos
Captions, also known as subtitles, are textual representations of spoken or auditory content that are synchronised with audio or video media. They provide a transcript of the dialogue, narration, and other relevant audio information, including sound effects or musical cues, allowing individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to understand the content. Captions can be displayed on the screen while the media is playing, either as open captions (permanently visible) or closed captions (user-selectable). Closed captions can be turned on or off by the viewer, giving them control over the display of captions.
People who have a hearing impairment or sensory issues can’t follow along with a video if there are no captions. But also for people of hearing, the availability of captions is a great option. Some students learn better when they hear what's being said, while others learn better when they read it. Having the option, makes your course more inclusive and gives students the possibility to choose what works best for them.
How to add captions to your video in Canvas?
Kaltura is the video platform that is used by the VU and is integrated in Canvas under the name "My Media". The default setting in Kaltura is that automatically generated captions are not available. So you will have to turn this option on for your students. You can only do this when you have the rights to the video (when you have the possibility to edit the video).
To do this, go to the video you want to add captions to. Underneath the video, choose Actions > Captions & Enrich. See image below. Underneath the video you can now choose what type of captions you want to be automatically generated. You can choose the language. Submit your request and the choice to use captions will be added to your video. This does take a while to generate. You don't need to wait, you can leave the screen and the captions will be added to the video when they are ready. You can add another request if you want to add several languages to your video.
Students can choose to add the captions to the video by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the video.
