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Make Your Videos Accessible

 

Overview

Accessibility is the practice of making learning content available to all learners. When we use audio and video content, we need to consider learners who may be blind, deaf, hard of hearing, English may not be their primary language, or other situations where accommodations are necessary to process media-based information.

Core Elements of Accessible Video Media

Captions: Captions, whether open or closed, translate the audio of a recording into words, most commonly writing out the dialog of a movie, lecture, or other form of media.

  • Closed Captions: Text-based captions that can be enabled or disabled by the user of the media. Closed captions often translate the dialog of a video into words so that a deaf or hard of hearing individual can understand the audio of a recording.
  • Open Captions: are text-based captions that have been permanently recorded with or on top of the video. In film, this is often done with movies where the audio is in the original language and the permanent subtitles are in another language (such as a French film with English subtitles). With open captions, the words have been "burned" or "baked in" directly with the picture of the video so that they are always present, cannot be disabled, cannot be resized or moved, and cannot be changed to another language.]

Transcripts: A transcript is a separate document, sidebar, or information panel  that translates the audio and video of a recording into words. Each speaker is clearly indicated and other critical information, such as actions, sounds, and settings, are included. 

Audio Descriptions: Audio descriptions offer the additional context or details of a video or audio recording that is not dialog. This often includes actions, sound effects, and other details that aid in comprehension. Combined with captions, they provide the full story of the video, especially for those who are not able to see the media.

Accessible Media Player: The player should be fully keyboard and screen reader accessible to easily allow a person to interact with the media to accomplish common actions like play, stop, increase volume, mute, enable/disable captions, etc.

Fact: Auto-generated Captions Are Not Enough

Many tools, like Zoom, Panopto, YouTube, and others, offer auto-generated captions, which are very convenient and can help fill a gap when a live captioner is not available. However, automatic captions are not 100% accurate. While the systems that power automated captions have access to large dictionaries of words and languages, they often can't interpret acronyms, and experience problems with different accents, struggle when a speaker's volume or tone varies, and often don't understand highly specialized terms (e.g. scientific terms, class or school-specific abbreviations, and mathematical formulas). The auto-captions will make best-guesses and these can often lead to undesirable outcomes. For these reasons, always review and edit any auto-generated captions used in class-related or public-facing media content.

Also, live captioners are not 100% accurate either. Therefore, if you will be using a live captioner for a class or event, please prepare the captioner as much in advance as possible with an outline of your prepared lecture or speech, a glossary of common terms, a list of abbreviations/acronyms, or a summary of any specialty phrasing that may be known to a subject matter expert. If your class requires accommodation for one or more students, be sure to consult with the Office of Student Accessibility for captioning options.

Zoom and Captions

Verify Your Zoom Meeting Settings

Zoom offers both automated and live captioning settings. Automated captions can be enabled by anyone. Live captioning requires the professor to work with the Office of Student Accessibility in advance or to prepare or appoint a member of the class to type the live captions.

  1. Visit zoom.pepperdine.edu. NOTE: If you teach in the 2PEP platform, please use the 2PEP Zoom service only for 2PEP classes. Consult with the appropriate 2PEP Support group.
    Select Sign In.
  2. On the Pepperdine CAS service, enter your Pepperdine NetworkID and password and follow the on-screen prompts.
  3. Once logged into Pepperdine Zoom, select Settings in the left menu.
  4. In the search box at the top, enter "caption" and press Enter/Return.
  5. Review the caption options and enable any desired options that are not on by default.

           a. Manual Captions (Required if you are working with the Office of Student Accessibility)
           b. Automated Captions
           c. Save Captions (Not enabled by default)
           d. Full Transcript
           e. Save closed caption as a VTT file (for local or cloud recordings)

You may learn more at the Zoom support article, "Saving closed captions in a meeting."

Turn on Zoom Meeting Closed Captions

As the host of a live Zoom session, enable closed captioning by selecting the "Show Captions" icon (CC) on the navigation panel. 

Steps include:

  1. Select Show Captions (CC)
  2. Choose your meeting caption options
  3. Select your desired Speaking Language for captions (English is pre-selected as the default language)
  4. Select View Transcript (optional) to see the live transcript in a side panel
  5. Select Caption Settings (optional) to set the display size for caption text
  6. Choose caption host controls
  7. Choose Disable captions to prevent participants from viewing automated closed captions
  8. Choose Setup manual captioner to enable/assign a live captioner within the meeting 

 

Edit a Recording's Closed Captions

Steps include:

  1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
  2. In the navigation menu, select Recordings.
  3. Choose the name of the recorded meeting.
  4. You will see a list of recording files.
  5. Click the play icon.
  6. The text of the transcript displays on the right-hand side of the video.
  7. Hover over a phrase you want to edit and click the pencil icon.
  8. If a phrase belongs to an unknown speaker, you can also hover over Unknown Speaker and click the pencil icon to edit the name.
  9. Make any changes to the text, then click the check mark. The updated version of the text is displayed when you play the audio or video file.

Another option is to select Host Controls and Enable Manual Captioner. This assigns someone to type, or you can begin typing yourself, or a 3rd-party closed captioning service can be used to type instead. The Closed Captioning settings in Zoom can be modified as well. These allows you to:

  1. Adjust the font size of the captions.
  2. Preview what the captions will look like before the video begins.
  3. Adjust the chat display size.
  4. Scroll through the Screen Reader Alerts in the Accessibility Navigation Panel to adjust the settings, accordingly. 

Panopto Captions and Audio Descriptions

To upload a video from your drive into Panopto, use the following steps:

  1. Select Upload Media  or find the backed up video from Zoom that is already in Panopto
  2. Select the video file to upload and watch it upload into Panopto
  3. Locate the Closed Caption settings provided in Panopto in the left side navigation panel

Enable Automated Captions for a Video

  1. Click on the Closed Captioning icon (CC) at the bottom right.
  2. Click on Caption Settings (right side) to adjust the position of the captioning, the color, and size of the captions.

Edit Captions for a Video

  1. Click on the Captions Settings (left side) to review the captions that have been captured from the video.  However, in order to edit the captioning, click on the pencil at the top right corner of the screen.  After clicking on the pencil at the top right of the screen, the left side navigation panel will open and reveal the transcripts for the entire video. Either start editing from the beginning of the transcript to correct grammar and what was actually said when speaking, or scroll down and select specific blocks of text and edit those instead.
  2. Select APPLY (top right) when editing is complete to save changes. A message will appear at the top of the screen confirming that changes have been applied to the video, asking if you would like to close the editor.  If all changes are complete, select “OKAY" and close the left side navigation panel, where editing has occurred. Captions can be read at the bottom of the screen.

Add Audio Descriptions for a Video

Audio descriptions can be added to a video to describe the action, closed captioning, and video descriptions happening for the deaf and hard of hearing. Notice in this video compilation created by the National Association of the Deaf called Good, Bad, and Ugly: Closed Captioning and Video Description, there are several examples demonstrating how audio, video descriptions and closed captions are modified.  

Edit Audio Descriptions for Video

  1. Click on the Captions Settings (left side) to review the captions that have been captured from the video.  To edit the audio descriptions, click on the pencil at the top right corner of the screen.  
  2. After clicking on the pencil at the top right of the screen, the left side navigation panel will open and click on audio descriptions. You can either import an audio description file, or begin typing the verbal depiction of key visual elements in media and live productions. When you are finished typing, select ENTER.
  3. Select APPLY (top right) when editing is complete to save changes. A message will appear at the top of the screen confirming that changes have been applied to the video, asking if you would like to close the editor.  If all changes are complete, select “OKAY" and close the left side navigation panel, where editing has occurred. Captions can be read at the bottom of the screen.

Transcriptions

Transcripts are a text version of speech and non-speech audio information that helps with understanding content. Transcripts can be obtained by:

  • Downloading them from a live meeting
  • Downloading them from a recording
  • Creating them from a Google Doc

 

Downloading Transcripts from a Live Meeting

While in a live Zoom session, a participant can click on “CC” to begin the closed captions. Although participants in a Zoom session can view Subtitles (or closed captions) at the bottom of the screen, a transcript is also viewable in the right side panel. 

Before a Zoom session ends, click Save Transcript to download and save the transcript from that meeting. The transcript is a text file (.txt) and can be opened in any text editor, like NotePad on PC or TextEdit on Mac. The text file will reveal the name of the speaker and provide time-stamped dialogue. 

 

Downloading Transcripts from A Zoom Recording

  1. Log into Pepperdine Zoom account
  2. Click on Recordings from the left side menu
  3. Select the recording to open it
  4. Click on the Audio Transcript to download the VTT file of the transcript from the recording

 

Creating Transcripts from Google Docs

When opening a Google Doc, we can enable audio transcription by following these steps:

  1. Select Tools
  2. Select Voice Typing from the dropdown menu that appears
  3. An icon of a microphone appears prompting me to “click to speak” 

The microphone is now considered “hot” (meaning it is live and ready to take transcription when you begin speaking). The microphone has changed color to red to symbolize this, with the cursor on the page ready to begin transcribing what you say.  As you speak, the microphone will transcribe audio text onto the Google Doc.

 

Additional Resources

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/1/ada-compliance-for-online-course-design

https://slateteams.com/4-reasons-why-captions-are-a-must-in-your-social-media-content/

 

Other

 

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