As the College of DuPage community strives toward excellence in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, the duty of proactively creating a culture of accessible learning is shared by all employees of the College. In addition, it is the responsibility of each individual faculty member, division, or event sponsor to be responsive to all specific accommodation requests and the division may be responsible for covering the cost of those accommodations.

What components does a video need to be ADA-compliant?

A video must meet the following criteria to be accessible:

• Closed captions are available in the video’s language and are at least 99% accurate.
• A transcript with timings is available with the video.
• There are audible descriptions of any visual elements conveying meaning.
• Text overlays are readable and follow best practices for both font face and size as well as color contrast with the background of 4.5:1 or higher.
• Verbal instructions do not rely on color, location, or position alone.
• The video player provides the ability to play, pause, fast-forward, rewind, and adjust the speed of playback.
• Content does not flash four or more times per second to avoid inducing seizures.

How do captions benefit everyone?

Captions and transcripts are important because they:

• Improve engagement by aiding focus and attention.
• Enable students to follow along when in noisy environments or transitioning between physical spaces.
• Support comprehension by English language learners and students for whom English is an additional language.
• Provide multimodal input that aids comprehension for all learners.
• Are essential for students who are Deaf, hard-of-hearing, or have cognitive impairments.
• Are essential for students who are blind or visually impaired, with the use of screen reading technology.
• Elevate the ranking of videos in web search results.

Fundamentally, it's also the law. Captions and transcripts are required under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

How do I know if a YouTube video has compliant closed captions?

There are two ways to identify whether a YouTube video has compliant captions. If your videos are in a Blackboard course, you can use the Accessibility Report tool for a list of any videos flagged with this issue. You can also determine if a YouTube video has compliant captions by inspecting the video player.

Using Your Blackboard Accessibility Report to Identify YouTube Videos without Compliant Captions

1. Navigate to the “Accessibility Report” tool in your Blackboard course shell.
2. Under “Issues” scroll to identify the issue titled “The HTML has videos without captions or with automated captions”.
3. Select the issue to bring up the list of content items needing captions.

Figure 1. Selecting an issue on the Accessibility Report provides a list of instances of that issue.

Checking the YouTube Video Player for Compliant Captions

To determine whether a video has edited captions in the video’s source language:

1. Select the "CC" button on the video’s media player. The video has no captions if the “CC” button is grayed out and can’t be selected.
2. Select the gear settings icon on the bottom of the video player.
3. Next, select “Subtitles/CC”. If the available caption tracks to choose from only include “English (auto-generated)”, the captions are not compliant. You may find that there are no captioning tracks to select from. Compliant captions are typically labeled by the language of the video’s spoken content, for example: “English (American)”.

Figure 2. A YouTube video with both professional and auto-captions available.

Why are automatic captions generally insufficient for meeting accessibility guidelines?

• Automatic captions do not provide sufficient punctuation, and many automated services do not provide punctuation at all.
• Even one error in a sentence can make it difficult or even impossible for a student to understand the content. These errors disproportionately affect English language learners and students with cognitive disabilities.
• Automatic captioning is biased and privileges Caucasian American accents and voices with unaffected speech.
• For videos that are being used in class that have auto-generated captions, you may proofread them for accuracy. If the captions prove to be accurate, with no errors and proper punctuation, they may be used. Faculty will be accountable for any videos shown that are not properly captioned.

How to Caption Third-Party YouTube Videos

There is no longer a straightforward way to caption YouTube videos that you don't own, but here are some alternatives to consider.

Contact the video’s creator

On YouTube, you can find a creator’s email address or website by navigating to their channel page and clicking ‘...more’ in the description. Creators are able to request and edit auto-captions for their videos to ensure accuracy.

Identify an alternative media source

Search YouTube to locate a version of the video that has professional captions or to identify an equivalent replacement. Your Librarian liaison can also help you to identify an alternative media source with accurate captions.

Create your own video

Learning Technologies can help you script and produce instructional videos for your students as well as show you how to edit the auto-captions on your YuJa videos. To initiate a video project with us, fill out the Video Intake Form.

Purchase captions for the 3rd-party YouTube video

Captions can be purchased and added as a layer to 3^rd party YouTube videos by request through your division office. The non-compliant media will need to be replaced in Blackboard and wherever it is linked or embedded with a video plugin provided by the captioning vendor. The cost of professional captions with transcription from the College’s preferred vendor is about $3 per minute with a 4-day turnaround time.