Overview
The audio portion of a video presentation is inaccessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing unless it includes captions. Captions are on-screen text descriptions that display a video product’s dialogue, identify speakers, and describe other relevant sounds that are otherwise inaccessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Captions are synchronized with the video image so that viewers have equivalent access to the content that is originally presented in sound, regardless of whether they receive that content via audio or text.
The benefits of closed captioning include improving clear communication for all users, improved Search Engine Optimization and content re-usability.
In this Article
Website and Public Video
Course Video
Disability Support Services
Website and Public Video
Video content publicly available on the ECU website must contain closed captioning. Video content can be recorded using a variety of recording tools, some of which offer text-to-speech features to add closed captioning (i.e., YouTube). Academic units and departments are responsible for ensuring that public video content on the ECU website contains closed captioning. The current cost of closed captioning is approximately $200 per hour of content. Departments should submit a Video Captioning Request.
Course Video
Instructors are not required to caption videos with restricted access in the LMS or other systems that only provide access to students enrolled in the course(s).
Instructors are encouraged to apply the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to develop accessible course content, including documents, web pages and multimedia. The UDL framework helps content developers create content that meets the needs of all learners. Courses with video content that have restricted access via ECU learning technology will be handled case-by-case.
Disability Support Services
The Office for Disability Support Services (DSS) works directly with students requiring captioning accommodations.