Audio Transcripts, Captioning, and Accessibility

Use of audio transcripts and closed captioning is important because it is supportive and inclusive not only of the students that require these accommodations but also other students that will benefit from these accommodations. We recommend that you review the Emory resources below for more information and suggestions for how to make your classroom more accessible.

Emory College: Accessibility Best Practices
Emory Department of Accessibility Services: Universal Design
Emory Department of Accessibility Services: COVID-19 Faculty FAQ
Emory Department of Accessibility Services: Notetaking

Captions and transcripts for pre-recorded video

There are many ways that you can obtain transcripts and captions for your recorded videos or other media. We will review how to do this using Canvas Studio and Zoom cloud transcription. If you are not familiar with Canvas Studio, please visit the Emory TLT page on the Canvas Studio Video Management Tool.

Canvas Studio

Follow these steps in Canvas Studio to create captions for your content:

Record your video. (You can use Zoom, Canvas Studio, or another program. See the Teaching with Video course for more information.)
Upload your video to Canvas Studio. When your video has finished uploading, view it and go to the Captions tab.
Request captions. You will receive an email when the captions are ready*. Return to Canvas Studio, view your video, and go to the Captions tab.
Proof and correct captions. You can do this within Canvas Studio, or you can download the caption file, edit the file, and reupload the edited caption file. (Simply right click on the caption file, select Open With > Notepad or another program that can read TXT files.) If you are working with a long video file, it will likely be easier to do this outside of Canvas.
Reupload captions to Canvas Studio on the Captions tab.
Post the video with captions enabled for students to access.

You can also use a separate captioning service like Amara and upload the caption file to Canvas Studio, which supports both SRT and VTT caption files (see the Caption basics section for more information).

(*Note that this is not automatic. The time to generate captions is roughly proportional to the length of your video and can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours or more.)

Zoom cloud recordings

You can use audio transcripts with Zoom cloud recordings to:

Generate a transcript*
View and edit the transcript
Display the transcript as closed captions
Search within the transcript
Export the transcript as a VTT file (see the Caption basics section for more information)

(*Note that this is not automatic, and the audio transcript may take additional time to process after the cloud recording video/audio has processed. You can expect captions within 1-2 business days on average.)

Other captioning services

Use Amara to type in your own captions as your video plays
Use Emory & 3Play Media for captioning and transcription (pay per minute)
10 Free Tools to Make Your Video Captioning Process Easier (Amara)
Using free online tools to caption your videos (University of Washington)
List of third-party tools & services to manage your captions, translations, and subtitles (Google/YouTube)

Live captioning

There are also services that offer live captioning, including Zoom (see the Zoom support page on closed captioning and this guide from the University of Minnesota) as well as PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 and Google Slides.

Note that these services are not 100% accurate. If you use any of these services for a video, you will need to correct your caption files as described above before posting them.

Resources

Accessibility

Captions and transcripts

Zoom: Using audio transcription for cloud recordings
Canvas: Adding captions to Canvas Studio media in a course
Emory & 3Play Media: Discounted Rates for Captioning and Transcription
10 Free Tools to Make Your Video Captioning Process Easier (Amara)
Using free online tools to caption your videos (University of Washington)
List of third-party tools & services to manage your captions, translations, and subtitles (Google/YouTube)

Caption basics

Terminology

Subtitles are timed transcriptions of audio files. Subtitles assume viewers can hear and are typically used when the viewer doesn’t speak the language.

Captions include these timed transcriptions along with descriptions of background noises, speaker differentiation, and other relevant information translated from sound to text. Captions are thus of particular use to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Captions come in two forms, open captions or closed captions. Closed captioning (CC) can be turned off by the viewer with the click of a button, while open captions are actually embedded into the video and cannot be turned off. On almost an popular video streaming service, you will see a “CC” button that you can toggle to have closed captions on or off, often in different languages.

Adapted from https://www.rev.com/blog/subtitles-vs-captions

Caption files

Caption files are essentially just TXT files (i.e. text with no formatting, like Notepad files) with time stamps before each line. You can open them with Notepad or any other software that can read text files - just right click on your caption file and say Open With > Notepad/program of your choice. They look like this:

1
00:00:01,080 --> 00:00:03,420
Hello everyone. Thank you for listening to this

2
00:00:03,420 --> 00:00:06,560
video. I hope your day is going well. My name

3
00:00:06,560 --> 00:00:09,510
is Alicia, and my pronouns are she/her/hers. Today,

There is not a single type of caption file, but the most common formats for caption files are WebVTT (.vtt) and SRT (.srt). These can be easily converted here: https://www.rev.com/captionconverter.

Why captions?

Providing captions and/or transcripts is a practice that addresses the following universal design principles:

Class Climate. Adopt practices that reflect high values with respect to both diversity and inclusiveness.
Interaction. Encourage regular and effective interactions between students and the instructor and ensure that communication methods are accessible to all participants.
Delivery Methods. Use multiple, accessible instructional methods that are accessible to all learners.
Information Resources and Technology. Ensure that course materials, notes, and other information resources are engaging, flexible, and accessible for all students.
Accommodation. Plan for accommodations for students whose needs are not met by the instructional design.

Adapted from UW: Universal Design in Education: Principles and Applications

Consider the following takeaways from a national survey about how all students use and perceive closed captions in the college classroom:

Regardless of whether they have a disability of any kind, a majority of students use closed captions at least some of the time.
Roughly 90 percent of all students who use closed captions find them at least moderately helpful for learning.
Specific ways in which closed captions can aid learning include comprehension, accuracy, engagement, and retention.

Source: A Rising Tide: How Closed Captions Can Benefit All Students

Tips

The font, size, and position of captions depends on the video hosting platform, and you will not be able to control this. It may be helpful to leave blank space at the top and bottom of your video, just in case. (Canvas Studio puts captions at the top of the video, roughly in the position where a PowerPoint slide title would be if you recorded your screen.)

If you want to improve the quality of your audio, Audacity is a free and easy to use option:

if there's a background hum: Effects > Noise Reduction
If there's a high-pitched whine: Effects > Low-Pass Filter
If you recorded over separate sessions and the volume is not consistent: Effect > Normalize