Captioning Support and Multimedia Accessibility

Accessibility is one of the foundations of SJSU’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. We are here to support you in your efforts to remove barriers to student learning by making your course materials more accessible.  

Captions are essential to helping viewers meaningfully access video content. While it is essential to provide captioned multimedia content for students who are Deaf or hard of hearing, captions can be useful to many of our students, including English language learners, parents, and those who must learn in shared and sometimes distracting environments.  

If you have received a message from the Accessible Education Center alerting you to a student who requires captioning as an accommodation, please complete our captioning request form. We send videos to an outside vendor for professional, discipline-specific captioning, so please allow as much lead-time as possible.  

Frequently Asked Questions

• What are captions?

  • Captions are synchronized words displayed at the same time with the audio portion of a video.  They are like subtitles but different in that they are designed for those viewers who are Deaf and hard of hearing.  Captions may also identify speakers and may include music, laughter, or on-screen and background sound effects.  Though intended for those who cannot hear the audio content, captions can help those whose primary languages are not English, enable us to view video in a noisy environment, learn new terminologies, and provide content information in more than one sensory modality.  
    
    California Education Code Section 67302.5 (a)(1) provides the following definition:
    
    “Captioned” or “captioning” means the display of text corresponding to, and synchronized with, the spoken-word audio portion of instructional material.

• Are captions required?

  • Yes, Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires all agencies receiving federal funding to make their electronic and information technology accessible to all people including those with disabilities. The Subpart B Technical Standards 1194.24(c)(b) of Section 508 for Video and Multimedia product further specifies:
    
    “All training and informational video and multimedia productions… that contain speech or other audio information necessary for the comprehension of the content shall be open or closed captioned.”
    
    Note: Captions can be open or closed. Open captions are permanently coded and displayed with the video and cannot be turned off whereas closed captions can be turned on and off.

• Do all the videos I show in the classroom and/or post online for my students have to be captioned?

  • Yes.

• What are transcripts?

  • Transcripts provide a textual version of the video content. They are not synchronized verbatim with the audio or spoken words and do not include time code. Transcripts are generally separate files from the videos.  They should be made available when audio files are included as part of the course materials.

• Will the transcripts be good enough?

  • No.  The appropriate accommodation for accessible video is synchronous captions.  However, for content that is audio only, transcripts are sufficient.

• How can I caption my own videos? 

  • Use Panopto to create or upload your videos, edit your captions and share the videos with your students. 

    Captions are automatically generated when you create or upload your captions with Panopto. However, to align with accessibility standards, you must edit your captions for accuracy.

    For more information, see the CFETI Panopto Webpage and the Panopto Blog on Video Captioning. 

• Where can I find closed captioned videos?

  • SJSU Library's collection of streaming videos

    YouTube has many good quality closed captioned (cc) videos. Use the search filter feature to search for cc videos on YouTube. See How to search for captioned videos on YouTube (1.5 min video).

• Who can help me make my own high quality accessible instructional videos?

  • CFETI offers professional video production services for faculty. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you create effective and engaging multimedia content for your courses. For more information or to request video production services, please complete this form.