Closed Captioning Statement

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Overview

Computers and the digitization of education and educational materials have moved from being cutting edge and innovative to staples in higher education over the past few decades.  While this was occurring slowly over the years with many faculty continuing to use more traditional methods of teaching, the COVID pandemic forced all or almost all of us to increase our use of technology in one way or another.     

Over the course of the upcoming academic year you will be receiving a series of communications aimed at increasing your knowledge around digital accessibility and inclusion.  These communications will include links to resources on how to make the content you are creating more accessible, articles on digital accessibility where you can learn more, and provide on-campus resources and contact information for people and offices that can provide support.  Whether you are creating course materials, sharing on social media, creating recruiting videos, updating documents, forms and paperwork or just sending emails, digital accessibility is essential in reaching all members of your audience and the DU community.

To start off this series of communications we are starting with closed captioning of video or audio content such as podcasts, blogs, vlogs, video instructional material, recordings used in flipped classrooms, trainings, workshops, promotional material and more.  Closed captioning is essential for users with hearing loss, but it is so much more than that.  Read on to learn about DU’s obligations and expectations regarding captioning and how easy captioning is in the modern era.

Practical benefits of captioning other than accessibility and legal compliance

Have you ever forgotten your earphones when using the light rail or when flying or maybe been at a noisy bar or restaurant while trying to watch a game? If so, then you’ve probably either benefitted from closed captioning or wanted to have access to captions. Below is a non-exhaustive list of benefits that closed captions provides with an emphasis on the benefits in an educational setting.

  1. Increased view time. Surveys have indicated that closed captioning increases view time with as many as 80% of people saying that they are more likely to watch video’s to completion when they are captioned.
  2. Search engine optimization (SEO). Captions are used by search engines to catalog video content making it searchable. When your content can be found through search engines like Google or DuckDuckGo, your video sees more traffic and as mentioned above, they are more likely to stay longer.
  3. Improved clarity. Captioning allows all users to access content when there is background noise, poor audio quality, or the speaker has an accent.
  4. Support for non-native English speakers. When English is a second, third or even fourth language, captions improve the ability to engage the content more fully and transcripts can even allow users to translate to and from their native language further supporting learning and access.
  5. Increased focus, retention and recall. Research indicates that the more of your senses that are engaged during learning increases focus, or said another way, decreases distractions. It also improves retention and recall. So, listening to audio coupled with reading captions improves learning outcomes.
  6. Learning disability support. Approximately 20% of undergraduate students at DU work with the Disability Service Program at some point during their enrollment. Many of those students have nonapparent disabilities including learning disabilities like ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, auditory processing disorders, and autism spectrum disorder. While captions benefit these students in differently there is research that suggests all of them benefit.

What is Closed Captioning and how is it different than other captions or subtitles?

The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) which is a federally funded program whose mission is to “support and improve the academic achievement of students who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf-blind.” defines captioning as “Captioning is the process of converting the audio content of a television broadcast, webcast, film, video, CD-ROM, DVD, live event, and other productions into text and displaying the text on a screen or monitor.”

Closed Captioning

Closed captioning is a text representation of the meaningful audio content in a video, or audio file or recording.  Closed captioning can be turned on and off, and on some platforms provides the ability for the user to change font, text size, location, color of the background and text for contrast, is displayed in coordination with the audio, include identification of the speaker, and sound effects relevant to understanding and music.  One of the most important aspects of closed captioning is it provides the ability to edit and correct errors in the text to improve accuracy and therefore the usability of the captions.  Closed captioning is denoted by the CC symbol you have likely seen on TV or any one of the many on-line media outlets like YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, etc. The most common web captioning formats are .VTT and .SRT.  

Open Captions

Open Captions by contrast are burned permanently into the video, are on all the time and don’t provide the user to turn them off, adjust the text, font or font size, location or contrast of text to background. Open captions also can’t be edited after creation, so any errors in the text cannot be edited or corrected. Open captions often don’t include relevant content outside of the spoken words, so no speaker identification, no indications of off-screen audio or information about music scores, etc. Open captions do not allow users to adjust sizing, font style or background color that can improve readability.

Subtitles

Subtitles on the other hand are intended to support access to content for those who do not speak the language being spoken in the video or audio. While subtitles do share some similarities as captions such has synchronization of the spoken word and text subtitles do not contain other key features needed for full understanding for those who can’t or aren’t accessing the audio such as off screen sounds like explosions or screeching tires in an action scene or speaker identification.

CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation)

CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) or live-captioning is the live transcription of spoken word for a live events so that they are ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant and accessible to those with hearing loss.  This is typically provided by a highly trained and certified provider who uses a stenography machine like court reporters use to create a live transcript for the user.  The user often views the transcript live on a projection screen, computer or mobile device.

What are the ethical and legal obligations for captioning?

Before going into the legal implications of uncaptioned v. captioned multimedia content we want to be clear that captioning is ethically the right thing to do.  Disability and hearing loss know no race, gender, gender identity or gender expression, national origin, socioeconomic limits or religion just to name a few.  If you serve any population, you are serving folks with disabilities and as such to create a truly inclusive and welcoming environment we must take steps to meet the needs of people with disabilities.

In the US, approximately 15% of those over the age of 18 report difficulty hearing, that’s almost 40 million people.  In addition, National Trends in Disability Employment reports that according to a recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that 34.4% of people with disabilities between the ages of 16 - 64 were employed in July 2022 vs. 75% of people without disabilities during that same timeframe.  DU’s vision statement says, “The University of Denver will be a great private university dedicated to the public good.”  Captioning is one way we can live these values and bring more diversity to the University and wider community. 

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504)

The ADA and Section 504 are civil rights legislation that requires employers and “places of public accommodation” such as private universities like DU, to provide effective communication to those with disabilities.  This includes captioning of any multimedia content used in the classroom as well as that made available to the public online.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

The FCC requires that any live, ear-live or recorded programming be captioned, including any religious organizations that broadcast content.  Not only does content have to be captioned but the FCC requires captioning to capture all spoken words in the dialogue but also auditory content relevant to a full understanding of the meaning.  This is why you will see included in brackets things like [uncomfortable laughter] or [intense percussion music] included in captions.

21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA)

The CVAA requires that any video that was previously aired on TV be closed captioned when redistributed or shown on any online platform.

Video Captioning Guidelines

By default, all public and academic videos should have closed captions and be remediated by a real person to improve accuracy and readability.  Auto generated closed captions created by auto speech recognition (ASR) technology is not perfect, so someone still needs to review them for readability and accuracy. 

Elements of Quality Captioning

  • Accurate: Errorless captions are the goal for each production.
  • Consistent: Uniformity in style and presentation of all captioning features is crucial for viewer understanding.
  • Clear: A complete textual representation of the audio, including speaker identification and non-speech information, provides clarity.
  • Readable: Captions are displayed with enough time to be read completely, are in synchronization with the audio, and are not obscured by (nor do they obscure) the visual content.
  • Equal: Equal access requires that the meaning and intention of the material is completely preserved.

Captioning Remediation Guidelines:

  • Verify spelling of speaker names and locations.
  • Speakers should be identified as they are talking within the captions and transcript.
  • Correct grammar such as capitalization and punctuation.
  • Note sound effects in captions.
  • No more than 2 lines of captions at a time.
  • No more than 32 characters per line, including spaces.
  • Provide an HTML downloadable transcript when possible.
  • Provide remediated captioning within 24 hours for urgent campus-wide communication provided via video communication.

What to Avoid:

  • Not reviewing the quality of auto generated ASR captions before posting to any public facing website or social media channel (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram etc.).
  • Burning in captions (open captions) into the video. This makes it impossible to edit captions and adjust caption text sizing, font style and turn off/on captions by the end-users.
  • Captions that are not synchronized with the video content.
  • Posting or linking to videos with no captions or unremediated captions.

Closed Captions Editing Software:

Here is a list of free and commercial software:

Good Examples of Closed Captioning:

Who Can Help with Captions?

IT Customer Services has hired students to help with digital media remediation. Please reach out to us at KalturaAdmin@du.edu if you have any questions or need help.

Zoom Events

Zoom provides auto closed captioning (called live transcription) with the ability to edit the captions after the live session. Zoom automatically adds the speaker names to the closed caption file. The Zoom closed caption video files can be saved and moved over to YouTube and/or Kaltura. Review and remediate captions before publishing.
 

Prioritizing Projects

Captioning video can be time consuming at times (duration or audio quality issues). Unfortunately, we do not have unlimited time to work on captioning remediation. Priority should be given to certain types of videos. For example:

  • A: Course related videos assigned to student(s) with hearing loss. ASR and human verification - 99%+ accurate
  • B: Public event or marketing videos with a large target audience. ASR and human verification - 98%+ accurate
  • C: Internal videos with a low audience. ASR 93%+ accurate

References

Coming soon