Closed captions are transcriptions that allow those with hearing disabilities to access spoken dialog or sounds within a video. By federal law, all videos published by Winston-Salem State University, must be closed captioned and accessible to the hearing impaired. Institutions that do not adhere to these guidelines can have federal funding revoked, and can be charged extensive fees for violation. Additional information on these guidelines can be found on our Digital Accessibility webpage.
How you choose to caption your video will likely depend on how you create your video and how you intend to host the video. The following methods should be considered.
If you use Camtasia to produce your videos, you can create captions during the production process. Please see this YouTube video entitled Adding Captions to a Video in Camtasia for details on how.
If you are recording a PowerPoint presentation, you can use the software’s built in live captioning and subtitles feature to have closed captioning appear on the recording as you speak. Please see this YouTube video titled PowerPoint Live Captions & Subtitles for more details. If using this feature, it is important to speak at a normal pace and enunciate clearly, as live subtitle features such as these are prone to inaccuracies.
Microsoft Stream is a video hosting service similar to YouTube and is part of the Office 365 platform. After uploading a video, Stream will automatically create captions. The captions Stream creates are usually pretty accurate and include proper grammar. However, the captions should still be reviewed for accuracy. Stream also accepts closed caption files.
If you plan to host your video on YouTube, you can take advantage of the service’s auto-captioning feature. However, like the auto-captioning mentioned in the PowerPoint section, there is a chance that the auto captions can be inaccurate at times. It also does not provide capitalization or punctuation, so it will be necessary to edit the auto generated captions to ensure accuracy and make them fully compliant. To learn more, see this video titled How to Caption a YouTube Video. YouTube will also accept uploading of closed caption filed created by services such as Rev, listed below, this can be easier than using the auto-generated captions. Please review the WSSU YouTube Guidelines for more information.