Guide To Transcripts and Captions: I. Overview

Guide to Transcripts and Captions
Special thanks to Dave Giberson of the San Diego Community College District Online Learning
Pathways group for permission to borrow from his excellent guidelines and tutorials.
I. Overview
Media posted on the Web should be made accessible to individuals with disabilities, including
visually and hearing impaired people. This means providing transcripts and/or captions for audio
and video. You can understand the need for transcripts and captions if you keep in mind how
people may access content.
• Blind individuals often use screen readers, which is software that uses audio output to
interpret and “read” the content, such as transcripts, out loud to the user.
• Hearing impaired individuals may depend on captions and transcripts so they can access
audio by reading.
II. Standards for Captioning

Providing captions for media is a broadly accepted accessibility standard, as reflected in WCAG
2.0 as well as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.
III. Prioritization
Providing transcripts and/or captions may be time-consuming and poses costs. Your first step is
to be judicious about what you post. Consider whether the multimedia project serves your
department’s mission and is of high enough quality to be worth the effort and cost.
In addition, the prospect of captioning can overwhelm anyone with a large media repository. You
will need to prioritize.
Considerations for prioritization:
1. Focus on transcribing and captioning new media projects and, for the time, being
don’t worry about retroactive captioning.
2. Review your posted media and take down any that is of low quality or no longer
useful.
3. For new media projects (and ultimately for existing postings) prioritize:
o Informational media available to and intended for the general public
o Media used in recurring student courses
o Media posted for employees that is related to job duties, policy, or conducting
University business
o Media intended for systemwide or campuswide audiences
4. Recognize situations when transcripts or captions may not be necessary:
o Media used for one-time courses in which no students need accommodation
o Media used for internal audiences that require no accommodation
o Videos of large, live events, such as commencement ceremonies
IV. Whether to Transcribe or Caption

Some situations require only transcripts. Others require captions. Note that to make captions you
must first have a transcript.
1. Provide transcripts for audio-only recordings.
o The text transcript must be posted along with the audio recording for hearing
impaired individuals. (Posting a transcript also ensures your website is keyword
searchable and will be indexed by search engines, which improves functionality
for all.)
2. Provide captions for video.
Captioned video
• ensures that deaf or hearing impaired individuals can use the video,
• supports different learning styles, especially for people who prefer to read instead of
listen, and
• is useful when it’s not possible or convenient to play the sound.
There are two types of captions:
• Closed captions: This is the technique to use because the viewer can turn off the
captioning.
• Open captions: Captions appear without the option to remove them.
V. How to Get Transcripts and Closed Captions

You may hire an outside service to transcribe and caption your video, or you may do it yourself.
Outside Service In-House
Advantages Reduces staff effort; may save No one-time costs

time
Disadvantages Cost usually is based on the Time consuming, requires some

time length of the media file training
The transcript must be
proofread
1. Outside Services
There are many transcription/captioning services available. You can request them to do the
whole process for you – take your video, make a transcript from it, and then add closed captions
to it and return it to you as a finished file ready to post. Or you may provide them with the
transcript and have them use it to add captions to the video, and then return the file to you to
post.
2. In-House Transcripts and Captions
The most time-consuming step is creating the transcript. Readily available and affordable
software makes the synchronization of a transcript with its video almost easy.
Steps for Creating Transcripts

1. Create an audio file. If starting with a video, extract the soundtrack into a stand-alone
sound (MP3) file that can be used for transcription. One way to accomplish this is to
import the video into Camtasia and export the soundtrack as an MP3 digital audio file
(tutorial for extracting the audio from a video file to MP3 format).
2. Transcribe the audio. You can do this manually or using voice recognition software. A
good rule of thumb is to manually transcribe when the automatic transcription is less than
70% accurate. Once you have a transcript, you will need to proofread and correct it.
o Manually. Once the audio file is created it can be used in a manual transcription
process - a text transcript is created by typing while listening intermittently to the
audio file. This process can be greatly facilitated by use of a transcription-
optimized, free audio player such as Express Scribe. Tutorial for using Express
Scribe.
o Using voice recognition software. It is possible to use a voice-recognition
package such as the Microsoft Windows voice-recognition engine now integrated
into Camtasia 7.1+ or the commercially available Dragon Naturally Speaking to
convert the audio file into a rough text transcript. This transcript must then be
edited to produce a usable document. The efficiency of this approach vs. the
manual method described above is variable, but the tight integration between
Camtasia Studio 7.1+ and the Windows voice-recognition technology makes this
a good choice for videos involving a single speaker for whom a voice recognition
profile has been created. This method is generally ineffective for multi-speaker
videos or those for which a speaker voice profile cannot be created.
3. Tutorials:
o Using Windows VR and Camtasia Studio
o Using Dragon Naturally Speaking
VI. How to Caption Video

Once you have the transcript, the next step is to use the transcript to make the captions. A variety
of tools are available for captioning:
VII. How to Include Captioned Video in Your Web Site

• If your media includes controls, ensure they work with a keyboard.
• Also, don't use color as the only way to indicate meaning.
o The classic example is a using green button for “go” and a red button for “stop.”
However, a screen reader can’t interpret the colors and a colorblind user may not be
able to distinguish the colors. To remedy this situation, provide a text indicator
that can be read by the screen reader and the colorblind user.
VIII. Additional Information

• Web Captioning Overview: http://webaim.org/techniques/captions/
• Best Practices in Online Captioning: http://joeclark.org/access/captioning/bpoc/
• Captioning Web Video (SDCCD): http://online2.sdccd.edu/tutorials/captioning/

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Guide To Transcripts and Captions: I. Overview

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Guide to Transcripts and Captions

II. Standards for Captioning

IV. Whether to Transcribe or Caption

V. How to Get Transcripts and Closed Captions

Outside Service In-House

Advantages Reduces staff effort; may save No one-time costs

Disadvantages Cost usually is based on the Time consuming, requires some

Steps for Creating Transcripts

VI. How to Caption Video

VII. How to Include Captioned Video in Your Web Site

VIII. Additional Information

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