Multimedia accessibility is important in ensuring all members of the audience can access the content in an equitable way. This can involve the production of captions, a transcript, and audio descriptions, as well as the use of an accessible media player for playback.
City is using accessible players and has switched on automated captions and/or transcripts for systems used to store and deliver multimedia content for learning.
Further advice and information about automated captions and how to use them.
Students have said that transcripts can enhance learning from a recording, e.g. for recap or revision. They are used by some disabled students as an assistive technology. You can use the transcript to search for and jump to quickly locate the relevant part of the recording. You can copy sections of the transcript to add to your notes.
We advise you not to rely solely on the automated captions/transcript when reviewing your multimedia content. These are considered a supplementary resource. Make sure you check the captions/transcript against the PowerPoint and readings to ensure you have a good understanding of the topic and the terminology used. You are encouraged to seek clarification from your teaching staff if necessary.
If you require accurate captions/transcripts as part of your reasonable adjustment, contact Student Health and Wellbeing to discuss your requirements for quality captions/transcripts. This will then result in human intervention to make corrections on the automated captions/transcripts. This usually substantially improves the accuracy of the captions/transcripts, but the accuracy can still be impacted by terminology used, accent of the lecturer and audio quality of the recording.
Lecturers also use MediaSpace to share multimedia content with you on Moodle.
To aid accessibility, videos on MediaSpace may have automated closed captions (subtitles) and a transcript. These may be switched on by default.
Currently our video content, delivered via Kaltura MediaSpace, uses closed captions and transcripts generated using automated speech recognition. This is about 70-85% (Kaltura, 2018) accurate depending on the topic, audio quality and lecturer.
We advise you not to rely solely on the captions/transcript when reviewing your video content. These are considered a supplementary resource. Make sure you check the captions/transcript against the PowerPoint and readings to ensure you have a good understanding of the topic and the terminology used. You are encouraged to seek clarification from your teaching staff if necessary.
Closed captions appear as a text description on the right side of the video, which you can toggle on and off. Select Show transcript to display the transcript beside the video and select Hide transcript to hide it.
If you require accurate captions/transcripts as part of your reasonable adjustment, contact Student Health and Wellbeing to discuss your requirements for quality captions/transcripts. This will then result in human intervention to make corrections on the automated captions/transcripts. This usually substantially improves the accuracy of the captions/transcripts, but the accuracy can still be impacted by terminology used, accent of the lecturer and audio quality of the recording.
