Closed Captioning
All public facing videos must be closed captioned. Closed captioning allows individuals with a hearing disability to access the content of your videos. Additionally, closed captioning is beneficial to a wide variety of students, including those for whom English is not their primary language, those who learn best by reading, and those who have trouble focusing.
ADA Guidelines for Captioning
- Captions should be 99% accurate (correct spelling, grammar, punctuation etc. )
- Add sound descriptions inside square brackets (i.e. [music] or [laughter])
- Speakers should be identified when more than one person is onscreen or when the speaker is not visible.
*Auto-generated captions are not ADA Compliant
For more detailed information please view the following:
- WebAIM Resources
WebAim: Captions, Transcripts, and Audio Descriptions
Closed Captioning Tools
If streaming a video on a different platform than the one used to create captions, the caption file (.SRT or .VTT) will be need to upload to the streaming service.
- ie. Services like Rev and 3Play will provide a caption file that will need to be uploaded along with the video to streaming services like Youtube and Brightcove.
For more information, watch this Closed Captioning Process Overview Video
There are many tools available online to close caption your videos, both paid and free (requires manual entry or editing). Below are some recommendations for captioning a pre-existing recorded video:
Zoom
- Zoom has the ability to provide a transcript/captions for a recording made through a Zoom cloud account. This service is free for Wesleyan users. In order to be available on a recording, the user needs to change their account/recording settings prior to starting the meeting. Zoom provides directions on their site, and there is a YouTube video on creating pre-recorded lectures with Zoom that includes how to turn transcripts on. For Wesleyan accounts, the host will need to edit the transcript in Zoom, and then share a link which contains the interactive transcript viewed alongside the video playback.
- Live captioning for Zoom meetings and webinars is provided through Zoom. More information, including how to use this resource, is available here: https://wesleyanedu.service-now.com/sp?id=kb_article&sys_id=39cec5521b026c101807da49cc4bcb96
- basic steps for captioning a zoom video
YouTube
- YouTube provides auto-generated captions, which can be edited.
- Users can also create their own captions, or enter their own transcript, and YouTube will set the timing for captions
Amara
- Amara provides the ability to manually caption/translate pre-recorded videos
Rev (Paid)
- Rev provides paid closed captioning services. Users can upload their videos and Rev returns the captions within 24 hours.
3PlayMedia (Paid)
- 3PlayMedia provides paid closed captioning services. Users can upload their videos and choose from different turn-around time options.
Streaming Closed Caption Videos on Cascade and WordPress Websites
Wesleyan Video Uploader (Brightcove)
- To add videos to Cascade and Wordpress Websites you will need to upload the video and the caption file.
- Use the Wesleyan Video Uploader Form (found in your Wesportal)