Regulations, best practices and technology resources for CC in the classroom. Presentation covers both internal and external production and editing.

1. CLOSED CAPTIONING
Regulations, best practices and technology resources

2. PROVISOS
• conditions,
• stipulations
• provisions
• clauses
• riders
• qualifications
• restrictions
• caveats

3. SCOPE
• Overview of legal issues
• External production Issues
• Internal production
• Synchronous
• Asynchronous
• Refining existing tools and practices

4. BEFORE WE GET INTO THE LEGALITIES
• Who benefits from captioning?

5. SECTION 508
• Agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to
information that is comparable to access available to others.
• While the law initially applied to federal resources, the Assistive Technology Act held
any entity receiving federal funds to the same standard
• Currently the standard is The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines

6. ADA
• Closed captioning or video transcriptions are required for:
• “Public entities,” i.e., state and local governments, in both internal and external
video communication.
• Public displays (e.g., museums)
• Public venues (e.g., libraries)
• Service industry (e.g., doctor’s offices)
• Retail (e.g., shops)
• Public Transportation (e.g., train stations)
• Education (e.g., universities)

7. FCC
• Why we should pay attention to the July 1st Rules:
• New Guidelines:
• Accuracy: captions must relay the speaker’s exact words with correct spelling,
punctuation, and grammar with 99% accuracy. No paraphrasing. Honor the original
tone and intent of the speaker.
• Time Synchronization: captions must align with the time the words are spoken.
Captions must not proceed too quickly for the viewer to read.
• Program Completeness: captions must be included from start to finish.
• Placement: captions must be positioned on the screen without blocking important
content. Font size should be reasonably legible.

8. OLD CAPTIONING GUIDELINES
• Accurate: Captions must match the spoken words in the dialogue and convey
background noises and other sounds to the fullest extent possible.
• Synchronous: Captions must coincide with their corresponding spoken words
and sounds to the greatest extent possible and must be displayed on the
screen at a speed that can be read by viewers.
• Complete: Captions must run from the beginning to the end of the program
to the fullest extent possible.
• Properly placed: Captions should not block other important visual content on
the screen, overlap one another or run off the edge of the video screen.

9. CAPTIONING VS SUBTITLES
• What is the difference and why does it matter?

10. EXTERNAL PRODUCTION
• What if I want to show a video that doesn’t have a closed caption option
• What if I want to include a video clip in a lecture?
• What if I need to show a video that has non-verbal audio?
• What if I want to show a live event?
• What if I want to comment during a video (double captioning)

11. WHAT IF I WANT TO SHOW A VIDEO
THAT DOESN’T HAVE A CLOSED
CAPTION OPTION
• 1. Search in subdb.com (618k titles)
• 2. Search in subscene.com (best pick for television
programming)
• 3. Search in opensubtitles.org OR put in a request

12. WHAT IF I WANT TO INCLUDE A VIDEO
CLIP IN A LECTURE?
• Closed vs Open Captioning
• VLC
• Handbrake

13. WHAT IF I NEED TO SHOW A VIDEO
THAT HAS NON-VERBAL AUDIO?
• Requirements: captions must …convey background noises and other sounds to the
fullest extent possible.
• Consider visual representations such as time/frequency, amplitude/time,
spectrogram or simple waveform.
• Use a split screen to achieve synchronicity.

14. WHAT IF I WANT TO SHOW A LIVE
EVENT?
• Gauge the complexity-
• how many people do you expect to speak and in what order
• What non-verbal elements do you expect?
• Consider partial accommodations
• Student Volunteer

15. WHAT IF I WANT TO COMMENT DURING
A VIDEO (DOUBLE CAPTIONING)
• The easiest option for synchronous, continuous commentary is the chat functionality
in blackboard
• Non-continuous commentary (pausing, resuming) will need visual mapping cues to
guide the viewer between the segments
• If you add additional captioning to a pre-produced video, be sure to follow the
speed rules (roll up captioning may be required)

16. SELF PRODUCED CAPTIONING
• Live or synchronous captioning
• Blackboard

17. ASYNCHRONOUS PRODUCTION
• Paid Options:
• Blackboard Collaborate
• Camtasia
• Open Source: MAGpie
• Student resources:
• YouTube

18. SYNCHRONOUS PRODUCTION
• Preparation is key:
• Microphone placement
• Captioning permissions
• Q&A
• Speed

19. QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS?