Closed Captions

Closed captions are not subtitles. Subtitles are displayed on the video and cannot be turned off. Some might say they are "burned" or "baked" into a video frame. They cannot be removed.

Subtitles provide information typically every audience member would need to know:

• a translation of a foreign language to that audience
  • e.g. English speaking audience getting a translation of Spanish dialogue
• a translation of a fictional language
  • e.g. audience getting a translation of alien dialogue

It is incredibly useful when volume cannot be raised. Yet, subtitles are still not visible to people with visual disabilities. They are not text, since they are part of the visual. If subtitles are used, provide a transcript or audio description.

Various video hosting solutions use the term "subtitles" to say captions are present:

• Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Allows presenters to turn on "subtitles" during slideshows
  • They are open captions that the audience cannot turn off during the presentation
• YouTube
  • Provides "subtitles/closed captions" on videos
  • They are closed captions (CC) which can be turned off

Open captions are text alternatives for audio content. Open captions behave just like subtitles in that they cannot be turned off. This term is used more often for real-time captioning.

Open captions benefit everyone, including those with hearing or cognitive disabilities. Yet, open captions can accidentally cover presentation content. This can be solved by software that allows the captions to appear on a separate window. That separate window may be a challenge, though. Some may have problems balancing different windows or browsers for viewing the presentation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) engines listen to what is said and try to translate it to text.

The speech translation part is called Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). It is what runs speech-to-text software.

It is not entirely accurate. That is because ASR alone does not recognize the context of the speech pattern.

Was it supposed to be "2", "to", or "two"?

The context translation part is called Natural Language Understanding (NLU). The AI engine looks at the words near the one that sounds like "2", "to", or "two".

Was it a number? Was it part of a phone number or address? Was it directing someone?

It is easier for a human to understand context than an AI engine these days. Manual, or human, checking fixes problems AI cannot perfectly solve yet:

• misunderstood words may accidentally display
  • similar sounding words
  • inappropriate or offensive words
  • wrong spellings of words
• misunderstood context may cause
  
  • telephone numbers to display as words
  • email addresses to display the words "at" and "dot" instead of punctuation marks "@" and "."
• misunderstood sentence structure may cause
  
  • missing periods and capitalization to stop and start new thoughts
  • missing commas or other punctuation to organize thoughts

Additionally, AI does not know the spelling of everyone's name. Names are uniquely spelled, and AI would need the spellings ahead of time. Web conferencing tools solve that problem for people logged in who speak. Make sure people spell their names correctly on their profiles.

Check how the words appear to tell if a video was auto-captioned. If words appear one or two at a time, it is may be auto-captioned. If sections or lines of words appear at a time, it may have been manually checked.

It is important to fix auto-captioned videos. If you are using an auto-captioned video, contact the video's owner. Ask if they have a transcript or can create the captions themselves. If they do not respond, you may need to transcribe the video instead. Provide that transcript to students requesting ADA accommodations. This should be done ahead of time, so students can interact and take part in real-time.

Make sure all other video accessibility guidelines have been addressed. Avoid resubmitting the video due to corrections.

Video and presentation hosting platforms like Microsoft Stream, YouTube, and Cisco Webex all have closed captioning editors where you can fix auto-generated captions.

You want to make sure the captions are spelled correctly (e.g. proper names, jargon, phone numbers, email addresses) and have the correct capitalization and punctuation. Sometimes, the start and end times for each clip of text is out of synch with the visuals, so you may have to edit those as well.

However, sometimes you don't have the resources to fix the captions:

• This may be due to lack of time resources on a long video (i.e. over 5 minutes).
• This may be due to the numerous errors you see in the auto-generated captions that would be hard to correct in time to present the video content.

Review copyright laws to ensure the content you are captioning can be submitted for captioning by TAMU-CC.

1. Distance Learning and Academic Innovations (DLAI, formerly ODELT) will review instructional use video requests. They may provide additional guidance. (See Teaching with Copyrighted Works)
2. If you do request to caption someone else’s videos, ask the owner first to caption their videos. Then offer up to send them a file if they are cooperative. For academic purposes, this helps improve the Open Educational Resources (OER) program.

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the privacy of students. This includes when a student is recorded. The scope covers when a student is seen, heard, or mentioned in the recording. It does not distinguish what criteria the student may be identified through. For example, a student should be considered identifiable even if the back of their head is seen. A student should be considered identifiable no matter the audio quality.

If a student is seen, heard, or mentioned in a recording, student consent is required. Or the student must be edited out of the recording.

If an instructor has recorded a class, the recording may only be shared with that class of students. The use of that recording in any other class or any other term is prohibited. That recording can only be re-used with student consent from all present in the recording.

Instructors are recommended to record instruction where students are not included. Short videos can assist in that manner. Short videos are also more accessible. They increase retention and comprehension.

Instructional videos are reviewed by Distance Learning and Academic Innovations (DLAI) for FERPA compliance.

Make sure the viewing permissions are set, so a captioning services provider can see it. Example permissions: "public" or "unlisted".

Recommended platforms: MediaSite, YouTube, Vimeo

Other platforms hide the video link or content. It cannot be viewed or uploaded to their system automatically. Instead, you would need to send a video file to them.

Please provide five (5) business days to process your request. It must be submitted to the captioning services provider. Then the provider will create the caption file for your video content.

While we have some faster turnaround options, those are not assured. Complex or long videos still need to be manually checked which takes a while. Video content with poor audio may take longer. Sometimes, it will be rejected for poor audio.

Does that mean you should not get the video captioned? No. You should allow your audience time to view the video, adding the time needed to process captions. This includes extending deadlines for students when video content is used on exams.

You can post videos on Facebook and add closed captions. Editing the captions does mean replacing the file. You may want to host the file more permanently on a recommended hosting platform, like MediaSite. You can easily request a captioning service provider transcribe your video. Then add the generated SRT file back into the Facebook video.

Mediasite is a video hosting solution. It integrates well with Blackboard Learn and provides closed captions.

When it is in MediaSite, you can request a captioning service provider transcribe your video. Captions will typically appear automatically once the captioning request has been processed. You still need to give five (5) business days lead time for processing.

Microsoft Stream is used to store recorded videos off of Microsoft Teams or other Microsoft applications. Your typical steps will be:

1. Start the auto-generation of captions of the Microsoft video.
2. Edit the transcript for your video in Microsoft Stream.

Note: These steps are in reference to prerecorded video. Some prerecorded video may have been saved from a live meeting, like those on Microsoft Teams. You can view closed captions live by selecting the More actions or ellipsis (...) button and then Turn on live captions. Keep in mind those are fully auto-generated and may have errors.

You need to provide the caption file to your Vimeo videos. Make sure our captioning services providers can view your video before making the captioning request.

YouTube provides a variety of support documentation on YouTube captioning services.

You can add your own closed captions to a YouTube video by

1. uploading a file (which can be created by a captioning services provider),
2. auto-syncing with a transcript file you already have, or
3. typing it in manually, including the start and end times for each clip of text.

If you use the auto-generated captions, you should edit the YouTube captions to fix the text or the timing.