With recent lawsuits, evolving legal requirements, and continuous advancements in technology, the question of closed captioning in higher education is one that is on a lot of people's minds. What does the future of captioning hold? In this webinar, Sean Zdenek, author of the book Reading Sounds: Closed Captioned Media and Popular Culture and an Associate Professor at Texas Tech University, will answer exactly that question. Given the legal landscape, he will first focus on the hurdles and challenges of developing an infrastructure for closed captioning at the university level. Sean will then take a closer look at where closed captioning is going, focusing on the likely future requirements for, advancements in, and features of captioning. This presentation will cover: Developing an infrastructure for captioning at the university level Training faculty & addressing faculty resistance Economic analysis of captioning Integrating closed captioning with lecture capture & video platforms Faculty response to new captioning mandates Future requirements for captioning Current & future advancements in closed captioning technology Advanced features that make captioning beneficial to all users

1. 1
The Future of Closed Captioning in
Higher Education
Sean Zdenek
Author, Reading Sounds
Associate Professor, Texas
Tech University
www.3playmedia.com
twitter: @3playmedia
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 Type questions in the window during the presentation
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Lily Bond (Moderator)
3Play Media
Director of Marketing
lily@3playmedia.com

2. OLC Workshops of Interest to You
• Special discounts available for OLC Members!
June 20 - 26, 2016 – Fundamentals: ADA & Web Accessibility
http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/learn/workshops

3. The future of closed captioning
in higher education and beyond
Sean Zdenek
Texas Tech University
12 May 2016
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu

4. About Sean Zdenek
• PhD, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
• Associate professor of
technical communication and
rhetoric, Texas Tech Univ.
• Author: Reading Sounds:
Closed-Captioned Media and
Popular Culture (2015)
• Twitter: @seanzdenek
• sean.zdenek@ttu.edu
• http://ReadingSounds.net
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 4

5. What we will cover today…
• Expanded definitions of caption quality and a
critique of current assumptions
• A promising view of the captioned present and
future, leveraged on universal design, robust
interfaces, interactivity, customized mashups,
automated workflows, search capabilities, better
learning outcomes, and “caption studies”
• Captioning advocacy from a faculty member’s
perspective
• A discussion of what departments and
institutions can do to shape the future.
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 5

6. What we won’t cover today…
• Legal requirements and lawsuits (508, 504, ADA)
– Harvard and MIT sued over lack of closed captions in
online courses (including MOOCs)
– Long list of higher ed lawsuits and settlements
– ADA: Accessible tech and proposed rulemaking
• Specific costs or budget issues
• Specific technologies or specific third-party
vendors
• Demographic info on students with disabilities
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 6

7. What is closed captioning?
• Wikipedia: “Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes
of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display
to provide additional or interpretive information.”
• FCC: “Closed captioning displays the audio portion of a television
program as text on the TV screen, providing a critical link to news,
entertainment and information for individuals who are deaf or hard-
of-hearing.”
• WhatIs.com: “Closed captions are a text version of the spoken part of
a television, movie, or computer presentation. Closed captioning was
developed to aid hearing-impaired people, but it's useful for a variety
of situations.
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 7
Definitions may: conflate subtitling and closed captioning, focus on audio
only, focus on speech only, assume that all sounds are or can be
captioned.

8. sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 8
Closed captioning provides audiovisual
access for viewers who are deaf or hard
of hearing.

9. Putting pressure on our assumptions:
A rhetorical approach to captioning
• Closed captioning is not simple transcription – choices
need to be made (consider manner of speaking IDs and
the debate over edited vs. verbatim captioning).
• Captioning is a skill and an art. Captioners decide which
sounds are significant and how to caption them (see
nonspeech sounds).
• Captioners don’t caption sounds per se. They convey
meanings in specific contexts.
• Captions produce a new text and a different experience
of the program (see Speaker IDs).
• Captions enact a number of transformations of
meaning in the move from sound to accessible writing
(see my seven transformations: contextualize, clarify,
formalize, equalize, linearize, time-shift, and distill).
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10. sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 10
Image: A frame from The Young Doctor’s Notebook (2012). Daniel Radcliffe is
turned towards a sink washing his hands. Because we can’t see him turn off the
sink, the caption alerts us when it happens: (TURNS TAP OFF). This nonspeech
caption does not describe a sound but an action. As such, the caption is more
concerned with the function of sound in a specific context than the specific sonic
qualities of the tap or the splashing sound when it is turned off. For more examples,
see how captions contextualize.

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“…it isn’t enough to tell us the mere text of
what is being said.” – Joe Clark, 2003

12. Quality captioning (PACT):
More than accuracy
• Accuracy is vital, particularly in education.
• Accuracy generates a lot of chatter:
– Caption fail videos
– Complaints on Twitter
– Criticisms of Google’s autocaptioning tech.
• But let’s not forget other criteria:
– PACT: Placement, Accuracy, Completeness, Timing
(see FCC 2015).
– See The Captioning Key’s style guidelines.
– On placement: “positioning carries meaning.”
– Robust interfaces and giving users control over them
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13. sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 13
Fallacy: Closed captioning does not require
special training. – Josélia Neves, 2008
“The main factor that drives captioning quality
is what clients are willing to pay for it.” –
professional closed captioner, 2012

14. sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 14
Image: Screenshot of a YouTube video showing all of the options available for
customizing the appearance of the closed captions: Font family, font color, font size,
background color, background opacity, window color, window opacity, character edge
style, and font opacity.

15. sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 15
Image: Screenshot of a Hulu video showing all of the options available for
customizing the appearance of the closed captions. The default setting is yellow type,
Arial typeface, medium size, thin black stroke, no background color (transparent).

16. Building robust interfaces
and honoring users’ preferences
• Some captioning interfaces allow users to customize the
appearance of captions in a number of ways.
• But we can push interface design further by considering
whether:
– Users can easily access the customization options (and
remember that users will be accessing course content
through many devices).
– The customization options are robust
– Users can carry their preferences with them like personal
style sheets.
– The interface supports placement options (problem:
bottom-centered alignment is usually the only option).
– Transcripts are also available (for customized reading and
expanding your audience)
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17. From making accommodations
to “baking in” captions
• Interactive transcripts (3Play Media, TED.com, YouTube…)
• Search engine optimization (SEO): reach more people
• Fully searchable environment of lectures and public-facing
videos.
• Multiple caption streams
– Subtitles in different languages
– Alternative caption tracks (for K-12: easy reading track)
– Captioning as learning tool
• Personalized video streams and course study tools
– Media clipping, archive searching, annotating,
bookmarking
• Device-independent support for captioning
• Automated workflows
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18. Lecture capture meets captioning
• Hearing students seem to love lecture capture, even when
the prof’s videos are presumably not captioned.
• Check out the student testimonials at CSUN.
• Now imagine giving students the power to:
– Search all the lectures by keyword
– Create mashups based on search queries.
– Interact with the transcript
– Use the transcript as a study guide
– Add their own caption tracks, video annotations
– Search the university’s entire archive of lectures
– See what segments are most popular (heat maps)
• And giving professors more data about: What students are
searching for, how they are using the transcripts, etc.
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19. sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 19
Image: A heat map from Hulu.com showing the popularity of each segment of an
episode of Glee. Viewer popularity spikes about three-fourths into the episode.
According to Hulu, the “mesa in the graph represents one of the musical numbers for
which the show has become so beloved, in this case a performance of “Defying Gravity.”
In short, more people are searching for and watching the musical numbers in Glee.
Searching and heat mapping is made possible because of closed captioning.
Heat maps are also interactive – click anywhere on a map to be transported to that
moment in the video.
Now imagine applying heat mapping to lecture videos. Students studying for an exam
can see which segments have been most popular among their peers and use this
information as a collaborative learning and studying tool. Profs have this data too.

20. A few pedagogical trends
(with a focus on trends that captioning advocates should watch)
• Flipped classrooms
• Online learning (video and audio conferencing)
• Embedded video (PowerPoint, Adobe PDFs)
• Mobile learning
• Expanded notions of literacy (e.g. multimodal, digital literacy)
• Social media/YouTube/live streaming
• Open access course materials (including MOOCs)
• Gamification and augmented reality systems
• EdTech (e.g. Blackboard)
• Active learning/flexible pedagogies (pace, place, mode)
• Just-in-time teaching and learning
• Intercultural/global focus (multilingual)
• Changing student demographics and expectations
• Nontraditional and international students
• From traditionally-bounded courses to “post-course era” (Bass 2012)
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21. So how do we get there?
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 21

22. Faculty responses
to new captioning mandates
• Why now?
• Who is responsible for captioning?
• What content is covered?
• What is the goal? For whom?
• What support is available to instructors?
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 22
Some confusion and resistance among faculty and administrators over
who is responsible for captioning, why/when captioning is needed, how it
will be paid for, what content is covered, the lack of an infrastructure to
support training and labor, etc.

23. Universal Design: One way forward
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 23
• Problem: Inflexible pedagogies, one size fits
all, focused on the “imaginary average
student”
• UDL: Universal design for learning focuses on
designing for all users regardless of ability
1. Provide multiple means of representation
2. Provide multiple means of action and expression
3. Provide multiple means of engagement
Closed captioning helps to enacts UDL: as an alternative to audio, by
providing a different modality, by offering a second/native language
(subtitles), by providing transcripts that can be customized in appearance.

24. Rhetorically Widening the Audience:
Literacy studies
24
• Mantra: Captions benefits everyone.
• Promote research on the positive role of captions in literacy
and learning (1980s-present, K-12 focus mainly):
– Improved comprehension, retention, note taking, incidental
word recognition, listening, grades, reading speed,
focus/attention.
– Same language subtitling (origin: India)
• Recognize that captions help diverse populations of
students
– Students with learning disabilities
– Students on the autistic spectrum
– Non-native speakers
– Older, returning students
• Bibliography of research on literacy and captioning
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu

25. sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 25
Captions clarify, contextualize, distill, and
formalize sounds. These functions can promote
learning, literacy, understanding.
In Twitter terms: Let me turn on the closed
captions so I don’t miss anything!

26. Widening the higher ed contexts
in which captions are valued
• Student learning a second language
• Non-native speaker/writer
• Student with cognitive disability who benefits
from access to a second info stream
• Student/prof reviewing and searching lectures
prior to an exam
• Student studying late at night or in a quiet area
(library)
• Student studying in a noisy area (rec center, bus)
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 26

27. Cultivating “Caption Studies”
• A program of research and development at the intersection
of reading, writing, sound studies, and accessibility.
• Possible research areas
– Literacy studies, especially in higher ed.
– Big data studies (do sirens always wail is a start.)
– Rhetorical/textual/film studies (e.g. Analyzing BB-8 captions)
– Experiments with animated and new forms of captioning
– Pedagogy/training/online education
– Usability and User Experience studies
– Institutional studies/critiques
– Surveys, interviews, case studies
– Assessments and recommendations
– Software and hardware application and development
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 27

28. Creating a departmental culture
of accessibility
• Problem: Faculty may feel like they don’t have the time or resources to
adhere to a new captioning mandate imposed on them.
• Some departmental solutions:
– Provide regular support and training to faculty (team-based)
– Arrange for outside speakers (e.g. director of student disability
services)
– Hold accessibility workshops through the dept’s IT or media lab
– Publish DIY tutorials (but provide other means of support too)
– Designate an accessibility liaison and clear lines of communication
– Manage expectations and explain requirements/laws
– Integrate accessibility into courses (including service learning)
– Publicize and reward accessible teaching
– Rhetorically widen the audience and reasons for captioning
– Make needs assessment, track student data
– Do user testing, surveys of majors
– Take incremental steps = increasingly accessible pedagogies 28

29. One size doesn’t fit all
• Diversity among the D/deaf and HOH population
• Diversity in class formats (online = live captioning;
large lecture = automated capture)
• Diversity in faculty needs/preferences
• Diversity in file types and lengths to be captioned
• Diversity in copyright permissions (instructor-
produced vs. third-party vids)
• Diversity in distribution channels (DVD vs.
YouTube)
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30. A case study in diversity,
hybridity, and complexity
• Pilot to practice: Developing a successful campus
captioning service (UC Boulder)
• Nine scenarios suggest a number of “big ideas”
– Complexities
– Institutional policy (to help prioritize needs)
– Hybridity (both local and vendor solutions)
– Time and expense (including turnaround time)
– Copyright and legality
– Partnerships across campus
– Resistance (pushing faculty > change how they teach)
– Technical challenges
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31. Creating an institutional culture
of accessibility
• Flexible, responsive, agile
• Prioritizing needs: Students with
accommodation letters, public-facing
videos, more permanent videos
• Permissions/legal: Copyright
• Multiplicity: Multiple vendor
contracts (case: Stanford)
• Hybridity: Outside and in-house
solutions (Reviewers, Cap Lab, DIY)
• Training and quality
• Support: Clear request and
consultation procedures
• Communication: Department liaison,
university accessibility coordinator
• Complexity: not one size fits all
• Simplicity: DIY tools
• Automation: Seamless workflows
that leverage automation
• Developing Policies
• Piloting/Assessment
• Technical challenges
• Planning/budgeting
• Managing expectations: Turnaround
times, costs, labor
• Communicating responsibilities
• Audit/Benchmarks
• Feedback: Surveying students
• Collaborate: Team-based model and
work with peer institutions
• Rhetorical widening: UDL
31

32. sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 32
What do you think the future holds for closed
captioning in higher education? What do you
want the future to look like and how can we get
there together?

33. Additional reading
• Digital Does Not Mean Accessible: Building
Accessible Institutional Infrastructures (3Play
Media)
• 2016 Roadmap to Web Accessibility in Higher
Education (3Play Media)
• Third-party captioning and copyright (Reid
2014)
• Principles: Universal design for learning (UDL
Center)
sean.zdenek@ttu.edu 33

34. 34
Presenters
Sean Zdenek
Author, Reading Sounds
Associate Professor, Texas
Tech University
Lily Bond
3Play Media
Director of Marketing
lily@3playmedia.com
Q&A
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recording of this webinar will be available for replay.
Upcoming Webinars:
 May 26: The Anatomy of an IT Accessibility
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