Instructional Innovation and Engagement

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TILT Caption Support

TILT Caption Support is a project designed to assist instructors who are facilitating a student’s closed caption accommodation. When a student with a closed caption accommodation registers for an academic course, TILT Caption Support will reach out to instructors to implement an action plan to caption all course material used in the course.

Meeting a Closed Captioning Accommodation

Computer-generated closed captions are not yet accurate enough to meet a closed captioning accommodation. TILT Caption Support works with instructors to edit computer-generated captions for accuracy.

  • TILT Caption Support will email course instructors about students registered for their course who require closed captions. Students should provide instructors with an accommodation letter at the start of the class with the full list of their accommodations. TILT Caption Support will often email instructors before the student provides their accommodation letter as the captioning process can take a significant amount of time.
  • All videos need to be hosted on a platform that includes closed captioning, preferably Echo360 because that system requires no extra steps from the instructor to provide TILT Caption Support access to their course videos. Other platforms such as YouTube or Stream may create extra work for instructors.
  • TILT Caption Support will work with instructors to coordinate the editing of computer-generated captions.
  • For pre-recorded videos, accurate (i.e., human-edited) closed captions must be provided at the same time the material is provided to all students.

Recordings of live class sessions will need edited closed captions as soon as possible after the lecture has concluded.

Closed Captions and Inclusive Design

Providing closed captions on course videos is an important piece of Inclusive Design Approach that benefits all students and gives you a big head start when meeting a disability accommodation.

Provide Computer-Generated Closed Captions on Videos

Closed captions generated by automated speech recognition (ASR) are now available on many video platforms. Whether you record lectures for your course in advance, record live class sessions for students to view later, or search for 3rd party videos online, make sure all videos have the option for students to display closed captions:

  • Host all course videos on a platform that provides computer-generated closed captions, such as Echo360.
  • Filter online search results to show only videos with closed captions: in YouTube, Search videos for captions or set Google’s Advanced Video Search subtitles option to “closed captions only”.
  • If you want to use a 3rd-party video that does not have closed captions available, ask the video owner to enable them. Sometimes this works! Another method would be to procure a download of the video for educational use and host it on a platform such as Echo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Instructors who have a student with an accommodation letter from Student Disability Services requesting closed captioning of course materials.
This service is only provided for a student with a closed caption accommodation. TILT Caption Support can answer caption related questions, but will not provide captions for courses that do not have a student with a closed caption accommodation.

Reach out to TILT Caption Support for general captioning questions or training.

While they are a step in the right direction, auto-generated captions are not ADA compliant because they can lack punctuation and have inaccuracies that can alter the meaning of the text.
Transcripts are for audio without video (think of things such as radio broadcasts or podcasts) and are not a substitute for closed captions.
Canvas does not have automated speech recognition and will not create captions for your video. To make a video with Canvas’ default video player, a closed caption file would have to be created in another platform then manually added to the Canvas video, at which point, it may be easier to use a different method to create/host video, such as in Echo.
Similar to Canvas, PowerPoint does not have automated speech recognition and will not create captions for your video. To make a video in PowerPoint accessible, a closed caption file would need to be created in another platform (such as Echo) then manually added to the video inside PowerPoint.

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