Do you have audio or video material on the web or use it in your courses? Are these materials captioned? The MediaHub can help coordinate your captioning needs.
Why Caption?
Many reasons exist for captioning including:
Benefits the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
People who are deaf or hard of hearing are not able to directly access auditory information. Captioning provides a lifeline by displaying audio content on screen as synchronized text.
A #captionTHIS day video demonstrates the need for captioning.
A transcript of the #captionTHIS day video is available.
Captions are Good Universal Design
Captions are beneficial to a wide variety of people and situations. They:
- improve comprehension.
- can be read by people who benefit from seeing and hearing words together such as people with certain learning disabilities, or visual learners, or English language learners.
- provide access where sound isn't allowed, in situations, users may not be able to access audio on their computers, such as labs without speakers.
- compensate for noisy backgrounds or for poor audio quality.
- clarify when the language is heavily accented.
- make words clearer when a person is unfamiliar with the subject terminology.
- are used by couples to keep peace in the bedroom (when one wants to roll over to sleep and the other wants to continue watching a video.)
- enable multitasking i.e., watching a video while answering the phone.
- are searchable, allowing people to search media files for a topic of interest.
Complies with University Policy
The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG), level AA, serve as the Web accessibility standard for the University of Minnesota. WCAG 2.0 Guidelines are categorized into 3 levels of conformance: A (lowest), AA (mid range), and AAA (highest). By conforming to AA, Web content meets both the A and AA conformance levels. AA is the University of Minnesota Standard. If a Web site conforms to Level AA, it means that it will be accessible for most people, under most circumstances.
To comply with the University of Minnesota standard:
All prerecorded audio-video content must have captions. This is Success Criterion 1.2.2:
"Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media, except when the media is a media alternative for text and is clearly labeled as such. (Level A)"
All live audio-video content must have captions. This is Success Criterion is 1.2.4:
"Captions are provided for all live audio content in synchronized media. (Level AA)"
Transcript of the #captionTHIS day video
Seriously, are you kidding me?
No captions??
[sigh]
This shows lack of accessibility...
I'm genuinely concerned, as Internet is growing at a rapid pace, and the Deaf community is lagging even further behind, because we're lacking access to information.
CNN is an excellent source for global news, however they do not caption their videos at all.
Greater Los Angeles on Deafness (GLAD) is currently in a lawsuit with them.
There's another example, with Netflix, as they now use streaming to view videos online and many of them are not captioned.
National Association of the Deaf (NAD) filed a lawsuit against Netflix for this.
It's not the just two. There are many more examples, including sports.
Would you like to see more examples?
There you go!
Numerous examples are presented in a graphic montage of company wordmarks including:
- Obama-Biden
- HBO
- CNN
- Yahoo!
- Money.com
- abc
- Romney
- AOL
- Fox News
- ESPN
- The Huffington Post
- CBS News
- Time
- NBA
- NBC
- USA Today
- Wired
- Showtime
- Blockbuster
- BBC
- The New York Times
- The Washington Post
- amazon.com
- Fortune
- The Wall Street Journal
- Prime
- Fortune
- Netflix
- NFL
- E online
- Sports Illustrated
See that? There is that many!
I want you to understand what Deaf people go through everyday.
But how do I do that?
Ah-ha. I know!
I would like to share with you a great quote by Pierre Desloges.
It is certainly inspirational and invokes goose bumps.
[Snaps fingers]
[No captions are displayed. Instead sign language is used alone to communicate the quote.]
[Snaps fingers]
[Captions resume]
Guess the year he wrote the quote.
No idea?
Let me tell you, the year of 1779.
Quite a while ago!
Bet you are relieved the captions are back?
Did you feel lost and confused?
That is because you lacked access to our language.
Now imagine experiencing this everyday.
You might think that captions are only for the Deaf community? This is not true.
In fact, it can benefit everyone.
Here is a brief list of how you can benefit from captions.
[List of benefits is presented]
Captioning online videos will:
- Help people with age-related hearing loss
- Increase video searchability
- Improve literacy skills
- Enable universal access
Now, I need your support to stop the oppression that denies Deaf people our right to access information.
Let us all work together and call attention to this issue.
How?
Social media.
What? Use this hashtag!
#captionTHIS
Let us take advantage of Facebook and Twitter!
Start talking about this and spread the word.
I want all of us to work together and make this happen on a specific day.
When? June 6th.
On June 6, let us work fervently to contact all companies, organizations and people who neglected to caption their online videos.
It is time for us to end this social injustice.
June 6th is the day the world will hea--- SEE us!
Please spread the word by sharing this video. Thank you!
And the quote?
I cannot understand how a language like sign language the richest in expressions, the most energetic, the most incalculably advantageous in its universal intelligibility - is still so neglected and that only the deaf speak it (as it were). This is, I confess, one of those irrationalities of the human mind that I cannot explain. - Pierre Desloges, 1779