D12 & D13 - Video/Audio

What Is "Appropriate Captioning"?

Many instructors aren't aware that auto-generated captioning (as is found on most YouTube videos) is not sufficient for accessibility. Proper captioning needs punctuation and appropriate word-matching. (If you doubt me, try watching a poorly captioned video with the sound turned off!)

Depending on the ownership of the video, there are several options for ensuring the videos you're using in your course have appropriate captioning.

If you created the video:

• upload it to Studio and edit as needed,
• use an external video-editing tool (e.g., Screencast-o-matic, YouTube) to edit,
  OR
• submit the video for captioning from 3CMedia (check out the other tab on this page).

If you didn't create the video:

• Amara Links to an external site. offers both open software for captioning 3rd-party educational videos and an archive of videos already captioned by others. (A free account is required.)
• Request that the owner of the YouTube channel add accurate captions.
• Do a search on YouTube or Google for whatever search terms are appropriate and then filter for “closed captioned.” (You’ll still have to double-check to make sure the captioning is good enough, but it will cut down on the number of obviously bad choices in your search results. =-)) 

Requesting captions

Many creators of video content are simply unaware that auto-generated captions aren't usable by hard-of-hearing viewers. I've had some luck (not a lot but enough that I always try) contacting the video owner and requesting they add accurate captions. I usually say something like this:

This is a great video I'd love to include in my XXX online course for XXX college. In order to meet federal accessibility guidelines for education, videos are required to have accurate captions with proper punctuation, capitalization and word matching. Would you, or whoever manages your YouTube channel, be willing to add accurate captions for your hard-of-hearing viewers? Thanks so much!

Filtered Search

To find properly captioned videos, do a search on YouTube or Google for whatever search terms are appropriate and then filter for “closed captioned.” You’ll still have to double-check to make sure the captioning is good enough, but it will cut down on the number of obviously bad choices. =-)

What's the Difference Between Captions and Audio Description?

The short answer is captions provide an on-screen text version of dialogue or narrative (for hard-of-hearing viewers). Audio description is a verbal explanation of what's happening on the screen (for visually challenged viewers).

Here's a nice blog post explaining What Is Audio Description?

Handling Audio

Audio files—spoken content and music with lyrics—will need to have a complete and accurate transcript provided.

Transcripts, which allow anyone not able to access content from web audio to read the content instead, are an important part of making web multimedia content accessible. Transcripts allow deaf/blind users to get content through the use of refreshable Braille and other devices. 

Transcripts don't necessarily have to be verbatim accounts of every single spoken word (for example, "um" or "uh" could be omitted). They should, however, contain additional descriptions, explanations, or comments that may be beneficial, such as indications of laughter or other relevant sounds.

Currently, there is no accessibility tool that can check for accurate captions; each video must be manually checked, looking for correct punctuation, capitalization and accurate word matching. Toggle on the closed captions, pick a random spot in the video and watch 30 seconds or so, enough to clearly determine if the captions have been edited for accuracy.

If the video has no dialogue or narration (only on-screen text or background music), captions are not required but a note should be located directly above the video indicating it has no dialogue so the hard-of-hearing viewer doesn't think captions were simply omitted.

Transcripts must accompany all audio files. A transcript may also be adequate in the case of a "talking head" video, where there is no visual information, just a speaker. However, a transcript is not sufficient for any video which includes visual content.