Captioning

• If there is a D/deaf/Hard of Hearing* (DHH) student in a class, yes.
• If there is no DHH student in a class and multimedia resources are used in more than one semester, yes.

Captioning Exceptions

• Because SMC is committed to a goal of universal design that will ensure all classes are designed to be accessible to all students in support of their success, having all multimedia captioned is our objective. That said, per our legal counsel, captioning is not required under the following specific circumstances. All criteria must be met:
• • You are absolutely sure there are no Center for Students with Disabilities students in your class who need captioning.
  • You use the videos for one semester only.  If used in subsequent semesters, they must be captioned.
  • The videos are accessed only by your students.  Any videos posted on a site viewable by the public must be captioned.
• There is no need to caption if the material is student work submitted only to the professor that will not be archived for future semesters or shared among other students for peer review.
• There is no need to caption longer works if clips are pulled from them. The clips can be compiled into a montage and captioned.
• If the video already has foreign language subtitles, do not caption unless requested to do so as an accommodation.

*“D/d” is an inclusive label. The term “Deaf” with a capital “D” is typically used for individuals who consider themselves part of the Deaf community and Deaf culture. The term “deaf” with a lower case “d” is typically used for individuals who may be clinically deaf but do not consider themselves part of the Deaf community.

None.

The short answer is “No.” Here is the explanation.

To help ensure D/deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) students receive appropriate accommodations, Denise Henninger, Supervisor, DHH Services,  notifies professors by email before the start of each semester if there is a DHH student enrolled in one of their courses. She will send out the email as soon as students request services and/or identify themselves to Center for Students with Disabilities. This is not a perfect process as DHH students, just like any other students, can add courses late or crash courses. Additionally, DHH students may not inform the Center for Students with Disabilities when enrolling in online courses since they will not need to arrange for interpreters or real-time captioning as they would for on-ground courses.

Keep in mind that ad hoc captioning to accommodate individual students cannot legally be SMC’s approach. The legal mandate is to purchase/create captioned multimedia so every DHH student (whether they have identified themselves to the Center for Students with Disabilities or not) has timely, equal access to our multimedia resources. Waiting to caption until a DHH student enrolls in a class is risky as captioning is a time-consuming task. If faculty have DHH students in their classes, and their multimedia is not captioned, the multimedia cannot be shown at all.

Students with disabilities who believe they have not been provided the appropriate accommodations to which they are legally entitled may sue SMC and/or the faculty/staff members involved. Students can also file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. If the Office of Civil Rights comes to SMC to investigate a complaint, every aspect of accessibility will be scrutinized in addition to the complaint.

The same principles apply to creating transcripts for audio files as for creating captioned multimedia like videos and DVDs.

No. The appropriate access strategy for multimedia is synchronous captions.

• Yes, if the student work will be shared among the students or used by the professor as an instructional resource in future semesters.
• No, if the student work is submitted only to the professor and will not be archived for future semesters.

Given the federal mandate for colleges to adopt captioned instructional materials, multimedia publisher content should be captioned. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. It is critical that you inquire about captioned multimedia before adopting publisher content. If there are no captioned multimedia publisher resources that meet your needs, notify Aaron French, our Alternate Media Special (french_aaron@smc.edu, x8934) immediately to ensure resources are captioned ASAP.

Many YouTube videos are auto captioned by YouTube; in other words, they are created through speech to text technology. The only way to know if the automatic captions are accurate is to activate them and play the video. We must never assume that the automatically generated captions are acceptable.

To ensure you are searching among captioned videos not created by auto captioning, you can use YouTube’s filter.

1. Initiate a YouTube search by typing keywords in the YouTube searchbox and pressing Enter.
2. Once your search results are displayed, click the Filter button located towards the upper left of the YouTube window.
3. Click the Subtitles/CC (closed caption) option within the Filter group.
4. The resulting videos will all have the CC icon in their description.

However, even videos designated as closed captioned by YouTube need to be evaluated.

Compliant captions include the following features:

• appropriate grammar, spelling, and punctuation,
• different speakers indicated when necessary for comprehension, and
• music and sound effects indicated.

If you have any questions about YouTube and captioning (e.g., how to caption and/or how to edit captions for YouTube videos), please contact Aaron French, our Alternate Media Specialist, (french_aaron@smc.edu, x8934).

Zoom generates a transcript and captions using auto captioning. These captions need to be edited and corrected to be compliant. If you have a DHH student in your class, these captions must be corrected before posting the Zoom lecture recording for viewing. If you need assistance in this process please contact Aaron French, our Alternate Media Specialist, (french_aaron@smc.edu, x8934).

Due to COVID-19, the requests for captioning statewide have grown by over 450% without a funding increase. As a result, the Chancellor's Office has developed new guidelines to address captioning requests. Effective November 1, 2020, 3C Media is giving top priority to certified captioning requests for students with disabilities. This certification is submitted by the Center for Students with Disabilities as verification that captioning was approved as a reasonable accommodation. All other requests will receive a lower priority.

As is our past and current practice, whenever we have a student who requires captioning as an accommodation, you will receive an email from Denise Henninger, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Supervisor (henninger_denise@smc.edu, x4497), or a Center for Students with Disabilities counselor. In the case that you have any videos that have not yet been captioned, please contact Aaron French, Alt Media Specialist, at french_aaron@smc.edu immediately about your captioning needs to ensure compliance.

Continue to submit your videos to 3C Media, understanding that they will take longer than usual to be processed. The captioned videos will be auto-captioned.  Because automatic captions are not accurate enough for compliance, you will need to edit the videos.  Please refer to these instructional resources for support with editing (How to Edit Auto-Captioning from 3C Media, located in Canvas Central and How to Edit Auto-Captioning from Zoom); and contact Aaron French, our Alternate Media Specialist (french_aaron@smc.edu, x8934) if you have any questions.

To ensure compliance, it is best practice to prepare in advance for the possibility that you will have a Center for Students with Disabilities DHH student in your class since captioning is a time-consuming task.  If you have a DHH student in your class, uncaptioned videos cannot legally be shown.

For all inquiries about captioning, please contact Aaron French, our Alternate Media Specialist (french_aaron@smc.edu, x8934).