In a close collaboration with the Duke Student Disabilities Access Office, SON-IT contracts with 3Play Media to provide closed captioning and transcription services for classroom and desktop lecture recordings. This service is provided for all courses with students who have an approved accommodations plan.
Here’s what you should know:
But first, here’s our Tech Tip of the Week
Do you use the MS Edge browser? Edge finally has a translate feature and it’s pretty neat. Try it out.
- Make sure you have the latest version of MS Edge
- Open MS Edge and go to a non-English web page? (Try this one if you need an example.)
- In the navigation bar, press the small icon beside the star (titled Show translate options.)
- Select the language to which you would like this page translated.
MS Edge has recently surpassed Firefox in popularity and is now the 2nd most popular browser (behind Chrome). It’s worth a try.
First things first … what’s available?
Captioning
A captioned video displays the text which was transcribed from the narration in the content, as well as descriptions of the sounds, music, etc. present. Videos are captioned in two ways:
- Open Captions – Caption text that is embedded into the video during the editing process and, therefore, cannot be turned on or off.
- Closed Captions – Caption text that is contained in a timed transcript that is played alongside the video in a media player. Closed captions can be toggled on and off.
Closed captioning is the most common type of video captioning and is the style provided by DUSON for faculty lectures.
Transcription
Transcripts provide a text version of the media content. Unlike captioning, transcripts are not timed or synchronized to the video content. They are separate files from the media and can be distributed as handouts.
Students – what you need to know …
Currently, DUSON provides captioning & transcription services for videos that are used in courses where a student has been approved for a reasonable accommodations plan by the appropriate Duke officials. That’s why as you progress through your nursing program, you will find that some of the lecture videos you watch are captioned and/or have transcriptions, and most do not.
DUSON follows guidelines established by the Duke Disability Management System. For any student who has an approved accommodations plan, we provide closed-captioning or transcriptions as required for a given accommodation.
Want to request an accommodations plan? Students can make a request by following this process through the DMS office.
Faculty – what you need to know …
Do you have a student with an approved accommodations plan and need your lectures processed?
We’ve got you covered. You don’t need to do a thing. Here’s how it works:
- Your student will request a reasonable accommodations plan from the Student Disability Access Office (SDAO).
- If your student approaches you about transcriptions or captioning, please provide them with the links above for requesting an accommodations plan.
- If approved, the SDAO will notify our Associate Dean of Academic Affairs (ADAA) and provide a detailed explanation of the specific accommodations we should provide.
- The ADAA office will provide relevant information to the SON-IT Director.
- Once we receive notification from the ADAA, SON-IT works with 3Play to provide captioning or transcriptions for all videos in the course.
Worried that SON-IT doesn’t know about a student needing accommodations? Let us know by completing a Media Services Request form. We’ll contact you shortly.
You should allow up to 4 days for your an individual video to be transcribed and captioned. Need it sooner? Ask us to escalate with 3Play. It isn’t guaranteed, but they can usually push something ahead for us when needed.
Need to post your video before the transcription is ready? According to the Duke Student Disability Access Office, you are approved to post a video for the class before the captioning/transcription is complete. SON-IT will work with you to re-post when it is complete.
Other options if you don’t have a student with an approved accommodations plan. There are some DIY options (including YouTube). SON-IT will work with you to try these options, however, the problem we’ve found is accuracy. Generally, the best you’re going to get is about 70% accuracy (less for highly technical/medical lectures) with very little punctuation.
What about Universal Design and Learning Best Practices? DUSON is currently focused on providing captioning services only when needed to meet requirements for an approved student accommodations plan. We will continue searching for affordable transcription/closed captioning options that provide an acceptable accuracy level. As always we appreciate all of your ideas for technology that we should consider adopting and we will work with you to find viable solutions.
Extra Credit
Any other questions about transcriptions or closed-captioning? Let us know.
