Video Captioning Services Provided by ISU Disability Services

This article provides an overview of the video captioning and audio transcription services offered by Disability Services at Idaho State University (ISU). Learn how to request captioning services, understand processing timelines and course access, and identify recommended video hosting options for accessible course materials. 

• Captioning Accommodation Process
• Processing Services Time Line
• Requesting Captioning Services
• How does Disability Services Gain Access to a Course?
• Identifying Video Hosting Options
• Additional Resources

When a course is flagged for video captioning accommodations, the Disability Services captioning team adds it to their processing system. The system helps Disability Services compile a list of course videos, monitor the accommodation progress, and manage captioning work from start to finish. The team processes audio and video captioning requests proactively, working ahead of student access, following the order of the weekly Canvas modules. If the teams finds that the course does not follow a linear time-line for your modules, we may contact you to better understand your preferred order of content. This will help us to ensure that students have access to captioned materials when they need them. 

If the accommodation team encounters a video or file that they cannot access, a broken link, or restricted content, they will reach out to the instructor directly in order to quickly resolve the issue.

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The Disability Services captioning team typically processes materials one week in advance to ensure everything is ready for the upcoming module/week/unit. If faculty plan to add or update content, they should inform the captioning team as early as possible to ensure that materials are available when the students need them. 

To request captioning services from Disability Services, please complete the Caption Request Form. The form helps the captioning team gather all the necessary information to complete the accommodation such as the course CRN, the location of the items in the course, and how the videos are linked within the course. In addition to providing captions for videos, the team can provide transcripts of podcasts and audio files.

• You may see people listed in the People page of your course who are not registered students. People with DS in front of their name have been assigned by Disability Services to assist students needing ADA accommodations such as video captioning, note taking, and/or ASL translation. These users have view-only access to course materials but do not have access to student grades or submissions. The ITRC creates the user accounts and populates them into specific courses at the request of Disability Services. Students enrolled in the course do not see these people listed in the People tab nor do they show in the course gradebook. 

Panopto

• The Panopto video management system is the preferred method for hosting instructor-created video materials. Panopto automatically creates AI-generated captions when content is uploaded to it. The Disability Services captioning team has direct access to all videos hosted on ISU's Panopto so that they can edit the AI-generated captions for ADA compliance and accuracy.  

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YouTube

• If faculty have chosen to use their ISU YouTube Studio account to host their lecture videos, the captioning team will work with them to gain editing access to the videos. 
• Third-party, non-ISU videos linked into a course from YouTube will be examined by the team for the availability of accurate captions. If a YouTube-hosted video needs to be captioned, Disability Services uses the screen capture software, TechSmith ScreenCast to record the video while it is played from YouTube. The software uses AI to generate captions that Disability Services then improves for accuracy. The captioned video is hosted on ScreenCast and students who need the accommodation are sent a direct link to the video.  

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Google Drive

• It is not recommended that faculty link videos into Canvas from Google Drive (GDrive). This is due to the data storage limits imposed on the University by Google. GDrive storage is currently capped at 50GB for faculty and 20GB for departments. If course materials are hosted on GDrive and are within the storage limit, disability services will work with faculty to gain editing access.

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Box

• If a video contains clinical or patient recordings, Box may the appropriate hosting platform. While Box provides strong security - especially for HIPAA-sensitive materials, it does not support closed captioning for videos. Disability Services will provide open (always on) captions for videos hosted on Box and will contact the Box owner to gain editing access. See Box Accessibility Overview for more information.

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Narrated PowerPoints

• PowerPoints that contain audio narration will be exported into a video format and uploaded to Panopto for closed captioning. The captioning team will work with the instructor to replace the original PowerPoint with a link to the captioned video hosted on Panopto.

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Podcasts and Audio Files

• Disability Services will provide transcripts of podcasts and/or audio files and link them into the course.

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Zoom Recordings

• Whenever possible, recordings of Zoom meetings should be saved to the Zoom cloud and linked into the course from there. Zoom automatically provides AI-generated captions but moving recordings to another host will break the caption links. Disability Services will work with the instructor to gain editing access to the videos in order to provide accurate closed captions.
• If a Zoom recording will be reused for multiple semesters, it is recommended that the instructor download the video from Zoom and upload it to Panopto. This will ensure that in the future, the video is not archived by Zoom and/or made unavailable.  

• TigerTracks article, Providing Closed Captions on Videos for Accessibility
• Collection of TigerTracks articles for faculty on the use of Panopto
• ISU Disability Services Captioning Services webpage and caption request form