The use of online video in lecture capture, class materials, and massive open online courses (MOOCS) has become an essential part of teaching and learning. As a result, many campuses have updated their accessibility policies to accommodate video captioning requirements. In this session, MIT OpenCourseWare, the University of New Hampshire, and Regis University discuss their campus accessibility policies and demonstrate the solutions they’ve implemented. The panel also discusses the costs and benefits derived, as well as best practices and tips for implementing accessibility technologies.
Panelists
Brett Paci
Video Publication Manager | MIT OpenCourseWare
Nicole Croy
E-learning Technologist | Regis University
Katherine Berger
Director, Disability Services for Students | University of New Hampshire
CJ Johnson (Moderator)
Co-Founder | 3Play Media
2. Agenda
Panel introduction
Katherine Berger
Director of Disability Services, University of New Hampshire
Nicole Croy
e-Learning Technologist, Regis University
Brett Paci
Video Publication Manager, MIT OpenCourseWare
Video Accessibility Background
Captioning Process at Scale
Subtitles and Transcripts for YouTube
Discussion
3. University of New Hampshire
Video Accessibility
Background
Katherine Berger
4. Accessibility Data
• More than 1 billion people have a disability
• 56.7 million report a disability in the U.S.
• 48 million (20%) in U.S. have some hearing
loss
• 11% of postsecondary students report
having a disability
• 45% of 1.6 million veterans seek disability
• 177,000+ veterans claimed hearing loss
5. Accessibility Laws
21st Century Communications & Video
Accessibility Act (CVAA)
• Applies to content that airs on TV and the Internet.
Section 504
• Part of Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• Anti-discrimination law
Section 508
• Added to Rehabilitation Act in 1986
• Applies to federal agencies and organizations
with federal subsidies
ADA
• Updated in 2008 via ADAAA
• For schools, same requirements as Section 504
• Netflix lawsuit implications
6. Accessibility Laws
CVAA Deadlines
Phased In: All prerecorded programming that
is not edited for Internet distribution
Phased In : Live & near-live programming
originally broadcast on television.
Sep 30, 2013 : Prerecorded programming that
is edited for Internet distribution.
Mar 30, 2014: Archival programming
7. Benefits of Captioning
• Accessible for deaf and hard of hearing
• For ESL viewers
• Flexibility to view anywhere, such as noisy
environments or offices
• Search
• Reusability
• Navigation, better UX
• SEO/discoverability
• Used as source for translation
9. Enterprise-Level Online & Blended Courses
475 Course Online
Roughly 60% include Video
http://www.regis.edu/regis.asp?sctn=facst&p1=cpsdld
10. We feel we have a duty to make ALL
required course materials accessible
to ALL learners.
11. Resources for Captioning
Requirements & Techniques
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG 2.0)
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#media-equiv
Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAim)
http://webaim.org/techniques/captions/
27. Question: Describe the impact of the interactive
video features on your viewing experience?
Answer: 100% feel it ‘Enhances’ or
‘Significantly Enhances’ (50/50 split.)
28. “I liked the transcript on its own, but the ability to select a word within
the transcript to start the video where I want is an outstanding
feature. I have full, quick, easy control over the delivery of the lecture.
Also, for review purposes, the ability to download the transcript, will allow
me to highlight segments I would want to hear, see and read. I am then
able to utilize a full range of senses in a manner that suits my needs...”
Welcome to the 3:30 panel, Accessible Video Captioning in Higher Ed and MOOCS
I’m CJ Johnson, founder of 3Play Media. Our company focuses on creating timed text for online video, and using that timed text for video captioning, search and interactive user experiences.
We have a great panel today and we want to focus most of the time on answering your questions,
But we wanted to start by letting each of our panelists give an overview of what they do and to describe a component of the accessibility process
Kathy Berger from University of New Hampshire will give us a quick background on rules and regulations around video accessibility.
Nicole Croy will take us through her experience at Regis University building a scalable captioning workflow.
And Brett Paci will talk about his experience at MIT publishing video with captions and interactive user experiences, specifically with using YouTube as a platform.
I’m the Video Publication Manager for MIT OpenCourseWare. On the OpenCourseWare site we publish virtually all of MIT’s course content. OCW is open and available to the world and users are encouraged to share our materials. Some courses feature video of the actual lectures as they’re taught on campus.
As Vid Pub Man I’m responsible for arranging video capture…
(courses, recitations (help sessions), interviews w/course faculty), as well as getting them edited. And then we get the edited videos back to publish…
… on various distribution channels, such as YouTube, iTunesU, Internet Archive, and MORE!! But then another process starts: process of transcribing and subtitling our videos. We dealt with workflow, cost, etc. but I wanna talk about why its all worth it… (BENEFIT)
So 1st of all, how do we get our videos transcribed and subtitled?
Send to 3PlayMedia.com (upload a video file, or just a link.) They use a little transcription cocktail consisting of speech recognition software and actual human beings working remotely; and they get the videos approx 99.6% accurate. Our choice has been to get it as close as poss to 100%, and that requires that someone (a SME) review the videos. (Typically MIT students do this, modest pay. And they can work whenever, wherever they want. Drawback, much like my scalp, they tend to flake-out during the hot summer months.)
Now, due to 3Play’s ever increasing accuracy we’re on the cusp of moving to a process of pubbing without review which allows us to pub much more quickly (and of course, the users WILL LET US KNOW if there’s a mistake, and we can easily re-access the file on the 3Play site, export again and refresh the srt to YouTube.)
Of course, this all costs money. So why do we do it?
We do it for L.O.V.E.. And yes, the hearing impaired are one clear audience to benefit from transcribing and subtitle/captioning materials (and that’s huge, but you probably already know that.) But there’s another important group as well, probably a much bigger group: non-native english speakers. I’ll try to put you in their shoes, if you’re not already in them…
Imagine you’re attempting to learn some difficult subject matter like nuclear science and engineering. Hard enough, right?
But now you’ve got this second mountain to climb, which is the language. Providing transcripts and subtitles helps mitigate that second layer of difficulty…
And you could end up helping non-native english speakers bypass that second leg altogether, because transcripts can also facilitate translation into the MOTHER TONGUE of those users. Potentially… and at the very least they can review the english more carefully to make sure they’ve got it.
We also tested something else out in conjunction with 3PlayMedia
A video plugin (or set of plug-ins) that include the subtitles, of course, an interactive scrolling transcript (and what I mean by that is the blue highlight follows along with the speaker AND conversely, wherever you are in the transcript, when you click on a word you jump to that spot in the video (you’ve probably seen this sort of thing elsewhere.) But this becomes even more useful when you add in search functionality (search this video and this course.) And when you search for a word, a marker will appear in video timeline at every instance of that keyword.
So, what good is this, really?
We created a survey for people who test out this “video plug-in suite,” Asking them to “Describe…” Now even around our office when it came to the whole scrolling interactive transcript we initially all kind of felt like “well its kinda nice to have, but kind of annoying.” In our survey however, 100% either “Enhances” or “Significantly enhances”; a 50/50 split between those two (no one selected the other two options, don’t know what they are, maybe “Does not enhance” and “Please make it stop.”
We often hear about how you can’t tryly replicate the classroom experience online (MOOCs, etc), which is probably true, but here we have something we can do that the classroom can’t really replicate.
Now personally I really like this next one…
So, ok. But why? What makes it easier for you to understand? The very next survey response sort of clarifies…
How many of you have learned a foreign language? In your native language, you can sort of half-listen; check-out, check-back-in and its like everything you weren’t quite focusing got stored in your short term memory and your brain says, “Ok, here’s what you missed” and you catch right up. In a foreign language, even if you’re fairly proficient, you really need to concentrate just to get the language part. And if you’re learning a difficult subject, well there’s your two mountains (you’re learning something complex, and you’re trying to learn it in a language that you’re struggling to understand.) So while for a lot of native english speakers these features seem like just a nice-to-have, for many, many users out there these features are extremely valuable.
Satisfaction, goodwill, hundreds of thank you emails and thank you posts on Facebook… but it also makes your site, your materials more…
When you add transcripts/subtitles(/closed captions) to a video, the entire transcript becomes searchable; even "start playing at search term” Search with or without quote brings up listing and “start playing”, but with quotes makes it the first result. (Now in Google too!)
I use this one because its helping my four-year-old daughter learn italian. You’d be amazed how a song like that can get a toddler interested in a foreign language. To her she’s just having fun.
So the point of all this is if you can get your videos transcribed, subtitled, captioned, do it. Its worth it for you and its worth it for the users.
Public expectations. The Open Ed movement has created an expectation for ed materials to be shared freely; and we’d like to create the expectation of greater accessibility and greater ability to work with these materials at different speeds, from different angles, in different languages like a multi-faceted education diamond. Its already happening (places like EdX) and we’d like to perpetuate that.
Call me. Tell yer friends. Stay up all night to get lucky.