Captioning

All media resources used more than once in University programs and activities—whether instructional, informational, marketing, or promotional—must be accessible.  All media resources shared on UM websites must have closed-captioning for videos and audio descriptions. Audio resources must be transcribed.

Definitions

• Captioning is synchronized text that displays on the screen during a video. Videos must be captioned so that individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing can understand the information contained in sounds and dialogue. 
• Captions can be either open or closed.  UM's standard is closed captions. Open captions are always visible and cannot be turned off, which may distract some individuals.  Closed captions provide users with the ability to turn them on and off.
• Audio description is comments interspersed between dialogue that describes non-verbal actions and events.

Options

• Captioning services are available on campus.  Learn more and complete the captioning request form. 
  
  • The Office for Disability Equity (ODE) provides captioning for qualified students by working with their instructors.
  • Accessible Technology Services (ATS) provides captioning for other videos. ATS welcomes your help with transcription.

Recommendations

• Zoom web conferencing, with full audio, video, and sharing capabilities, complies with Federal standards and requirements (with some exceptions). Zoom provides options for live and recorded transcripts and captioning.
• YouTube and other video platforms that have known accessible video players and captions are recommended. BOX should not be used as a location to present videos since:
  • captions cannot be seen when videos are played in BOX
  • the video and the caption file both need to be downloaded to provide captioned videos on the target computer 
  • the video player's ability to handle captions and be accessible is dependent upon the viewer's local machine
• If you will be working with ATS or UMOnline to obtain captioning, we recommend that you create a unique Gmail / YouTube account name just for recording and captioning work.  For example, you could create name.lectures@gmail.com or name-recording@gmail.com.  Then ATS can support you directly by placing completed captions.