Transcript of video:
(00:02) Why Captions Matter
Captions on audio and video content is very important for accessibility. You want to make sure that your videos have captions available. Many of the tools that we use have auto captioning.
The captions give audio as text. As you can see in this screenshot, they make spoken content visible when audio can't be heard or processed.
(00:25) Example and Who Captions Primarily Help
So, this man is saying, "Many of you also know I'm hard of hearing." and I could read that as I'm watching the video, even if I couldn't access the sound.
Primarily, captions help people who are deaf and heart of hearing.
(00:25) Who Else Captions Help
But who else can captions help? Anyone in a noisy or even a quiet environment. Think of an loud airport terminal or a quiet waiting room.
People who process information better through text benefit from captions. Multilingual learners benefit or anyone who can't or doesn't want to use sound.
(00:48) Auto Captioning and Accuracy
The auto captioning is standard in most of these tools here. So you can use those auto captioning tools, but you want to also make sure that you review those for accuracy.
So in your tool of choice, you can find where the auto captions are generated and check the timings and the wording.
(01:15) YouTube Caption Editing
So, in YouTube, you can go into your video that you create and find the settings, find the subtitles, and you can go in, you can edit those, you can adjust the timing, and you can clean it up.
(01:15) Google Slides Captions
Some other tips for presentation and video tools for closed captioning. With Google Slides, when presenting, you can turn on captions to play while you speak.
This works great when you're recording a screencast.
(01:39) Demonstration and Considerations
I'm going to turn those on right now as I finish this slide. So, I can toggle those on. And now the presentation is picking up my voice and providing subtitles here on my screen.
This is great if you're in a conference room and you want to have those turned on, keeping in mind that it could be distracting for other people.
But also, you can um do this when you're doing a screencast and then you've got those subtitles right there.
(01:59) Other Tools: PowerPoint and Canva
PowerPoint would be very similar when presenting. you can turn those on, but those in PowerPoint can also be um uh translated.
So, I was turning my uh subtitles off there.
So, in Canva, you can also record a video in a slide presentation and those are editable and also can be translated.
(02:30) Watching Videos and Using Transcripts
With YouTube, if you're just watching a video, closed captions are available. Then, you can turn them on or off however you want to use them.
And you can also find the transcript on a YouTube video.
(02:50) Screencastify and Zoom
Um, I'm using Screencastify to record this video. So, when I'm done with it, I always make sure that I add closed captions and transcripts, but then I can go in and edit them there as well, but then they're available for sure when I um export it out to YouTube.
And then Zoom. We use Zoom for meetings and think about closed captioning tools that might help people that are on our meeting.
(03:10) Accuracy Checklist for Auto Captions
Regardless of the tool you use, if the captions are autogenerated, you needs to check those for accuracy.
So, you want to look for grammar, jargon.
If there's a homonym, it might get it wrong. So, change those.
You can get rid of those filler words like um or the right. Um and then you also want to make sure that if there's a speaker name, you want to make sure that those are accurate.
You can provide u who is doing that speaking. So if it's like somebody that their face is not on the screen, you can say their names.
Then you can also provide non-spech sounds such as what the music is like or even the emotional nature of what's going on. if it's yelling or if it's whispering and those kinds of things.
(03:51) Transcripts as an Additional Best Practice
Another good practice for audio and video content is to provide transcripts in addition to the video and the audio.
This is just a good practice for universal design for learning where we're providing our content in multiple means.
And um in YouTube you can find transcripts. So if you are just watching any old video, you can turn those captions on but then you can also go find the transcript.
So if it's somebody else's video, you can find that transcript and provide that for your students or your users.
(04:30–end) Closing Notes
So don't forget that we have office hours on Mondays from 8 to 9 and you can contact us anytime. If that time doesn't work for you, we'll we'll help you however we can.
There's also more content, more videos, and more information on our website, a11y.esu10.org.