Implementing accessibility skills: Captions and transcripts

Learn how to use captions and transcripts

  • Panopto, YouTube and VoiceThread all provide automatic captioning through speech recognition. However, these will need to be checked carefully for accuracy and edited as needed.

  • Automatic captioning is more likely to make errors with proper nouns (e.g., names of people and places) and scientific and technical terms. If your recording contains these, be sure to check and correct them, as these errors are also more likely to add barriers to student comprehension of the material.

  • When you record your material, speaking slowly and clearly can improve the accuracy of automated captioning.

  • If you are recording your multimedia material in advance, working from a script will make it easier to edit the captions, as you can copy and paste the correct text from your script into the captioning editor. This document can also serve as a transcript.

  • Note that the ADA standard for caption accuracy is 98%. A Missouri Online Quality Course Review will not hold you to this standard, but ethically, please try to aim as high as possible.

Learn how to use captions in Panopto

By default, recorded Zoom sessions are backed up to Panopto (and deleted from the Zoom cloud). Whether you are creating Panopto lectures or sharing Zoom recordings this way, you will need to know how to add automatic captions to your videos. This can be done at the Panopto folder level or for individual recordings.

IMPORTANT: Automatic machine captioning at the folder level is not retroactive. If there are already recordings in the folder, you must manually import automatic captions to each of these recordings. But all future recordings stored to that folder will be automatically captioned.

Learn how to use captions in VoiceThread

If you are using a PowerPoint in your VoiceThread, run the Microsoft Accessibility Checker to ensure that your file is accessible before you upload it to VoiceThread.

Learn more about VoiceThread automatic captioning and how to edit VoiceThread automatic captions.

Learn how to use captions in YouTube

Panopto is the officially supported tool in the University of Missouri System for storing and sharing videos. However, you might choose to upload videos you create to YouTube, or you might ask your students to watch other videos found on YouTube.

If you upload your own media, you can add closed captions to your videos and edit captions for accuracy.

If you ask your students to watch other YouTube videos, be sure to provide them with instructions for managing accessibility settings. Be aware that not all YouTube video captions are accurate enough to comply with ADA requirements. If captioning errors interfere with student discernment of the content, you must be willing to provide an alternative media.

What this means

Captions serve as subtitles for video content, transcribing the speech in the video so that users can know what is being said. They might also include descriptions of non-speech sounds in the video — laughter, music playing, cars in the background, and so forth.

A transcript is a separate document from the multimedia content. Like captions, a transcript will provide the spoken words from the multimedia, but it will also include descriptions of non-speech sounds and visual elements. It benefits users who cannot hear or see the content. A transcript is necessary for audio-only content (such as a podcast episode) and might also be needed for video content to benefit users with hearing and visual impairments.

Why this matters

Obviously, captions and transcripts benefit students who are deaf or hard of hearing — which, according to the National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes, includes 1.3% of college students.

However, other students also benefit (Gernsbacher, 2015):

  • Offering captions or transcripts supports students who are in an environment where there is distracting background noise or where they cannot turn up the volume.
  • Captions improve second language literacy, benefiting students who are not native speakers in the language of instruction.
  • Captions can boost attention and memory, even for neurotypical learners who are not deaf.

In fact, a British study published in 2006 found that 20% of TV viewers enabled captioning while watching — but only 20% of those viewers were deaf, meaning that 80% of viewers who used closed captioning did so for other reasons (cited in Klein, 2021).

Captions in languages other than English

A caveat about automatic speech recognition: It assumes that the default language is English. If you are creating Panopto or VoiceThread lectures in a language other than English, you will need to take extra steps to ensure accurate captions.

For Panopto, see How to Use Multiple Language ASR Captioning to learn how to change the default language on a folder.

There is no way to change the default language on a VoiceThread. You will need to edit captions carefully by hand. Again, working from a script will streamline this task.

Learn more

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