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From: Karen Sorensen
Date: Tue, Apr 12 2011 4:03PM
Subject: Re: Transcribing & Captioning in Higher Ed
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Hi Becca,
Thanks for posting this inquiry. Portland Community College offers
transcribing and captioning services for media in courses that have
Disability Services students (who qualify for this accommodation) enrolled.
However this makes for a crazy beginning of term since students can register
up through the first week of classes. I'm working on proposing a policy that
all online courses are developed to 508 Rehabilitation Act standards (which
includes captioning) and that we will offer captioning of media to every
faculty member (so not just faculty who have a DS student) with 3 weeks
advanced notice.

As I understand 508 though, media can be left uncaptioned if there is an
alternative method for the student to achieve the same learning outcomes. Do
others agree with this? That is the key to not needing to caption copyright
protected material.

Captioning is funded currently by our Instructional Support, Distance
Education and Disability Services departments.

I hope others will contribute how they handle media captioning and 508
standards in general. This is a very big issue for our college right now. In
my research I found the Kansas
State<http://www.k-state.edu/dss/k-access/policy.html>;and Sacramento
State <http://www.csus.edu/accessibility/index.html>; accessibility policies
and websites very helpful.

Best,
Karen

Karen Sorensen
PCC Instructional Technology Specialist
Coordinating ADA Compliance of Instructional Media
971-722-4720


Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:43:00 -0400
From: "Palmer, Becca" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Subject: [WebAIM] Transcription/captioning
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I am seeking information as to what services are offered by various
institutions of higher education in the way of transcription and captioning
of audio and video . Our university offers these services, however, I would
like to get an idea of how many colleges or universities offer such services
and how they are funded; is the service institutionally funded or are there
any fees associated with those services (do the colleges or departments pay
or is it the responsibility of the instructor to cover the cost, etc.)?

I appreciate your taking the time to address this question and your efforts
in creating an accessible learning environment.

Thank you.

Becca Palmer
Transcription Service & Projects Coordinator
Instructional Development Center
Eastern Kentucky University
112 Crabbe Library, EKU Campus
521 Lancaster Avenue
Richmond, KY 40475

Phone: 859-622-1656
Fax: 859-622-1116

From: Giovanni Duarte
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 6:54AM
Subject: Re: Transcribing & Captioning in Higher Ed
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Karen,
I was recently in a conference at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
The Keynote speaker was Daniel Goldstein from NFB, and he emphasized that we
need to provide "equal access" or same mainstream access to content. In
other words, if you have a course that have media components such as videos,
audio, or images, those should have the corresponding descriptions or
transcripts. We provide transcripts for every single video that is
developed. We have incorporated this as part of the development phase so
costs are "low". In other instances, we may have a new video that was not
developed by instructional design so we will send the video to a third party
vendor for transcripts.

The key, in my opinion, is to make accessibility part of your development so
it is more effective and you are not reacting to provide solutions.

Thanks,
Giovanni.

From: Mills, Teresa
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 3:45PM
Subject: Re: Transcribing & Captioning in Higher Ed
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Regarding: As I understand 508 though, media can be left uncaptioned if there is an
alternative method for the student to achieve the same learning outcomes. Do
others agree with this?

I strongly disagree.

ADA or the 504, which ever would apply to your college (maybe both) would cover accommodation. If a qualified person with a disability asks for a reasonable accommodation, then the college would comply (i.e. Braille course material or a desk that a wheelchair could fit underneath). If you adopt 508 as many States and colleges have, 508 was meant to be proactive and build in accessibility. That is why we have standards (i.e. standards software, web, and multimedia that define accessibility requirements). Electronic and information technology should comply with relevant standards

Relevant to your question:

1194 Web and Internet Standards
Standard B: Multimedia & Captioning

(b) Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation.
There is an equivalent standard in the multimedia standards.

Alternative content for video will include both captions for spoken words and auditory descriptions of relevant actions taking place on the screen. These alternatives should be synchronized with the actions taking place on the screen.
Captioning for the audio portion is important as individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing will not be able to hear the auditory content. Synchronized captioning is required so someone reading the captions could also watch the speaker and associate relevant body language with the text of the speech.

Individuals who are blind or have low-vision may require audio descriptions to access the visual information in multimedia. Audio descriptions are verbal descriptions of the actions and images displayed in a video that are inserted during pauses in the regular dialogue or audio track. Audio descriptions are only necessary if significant information that is presented visually is not discernable from the dialogue or audio track.

For a video, a transcript or alternate method, unless the technology you are using can't be made accessible(or meet the applicable standards), would not be acceptable. The standard is clear that it must have synchronized captions.

However for audio (1194.22 A, non-text element), a transcript would be appropriate because you are dealing with sound (not multimedia) and this would provide equivalent information (assuming the same content was in the transcript as in the sound file.

In addition, you will want to make sure that your player for videos meet the software standards and the controls (i.e. play, pause, volume, mute buttons) are accessible.

Hope this helps with your research,
Teresa