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Caption On

Keep C.A.L.M. and Captions On

Keep C.A.L.M. and Caption On

As part of our Choose Accessible Learning Materials (C.A.L.M.) campaign, we are choosing to make closed captions a priority to help us meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) criterion 1.2.2. By choosing already closed captioned content, or creating closed captions, your message increases in clarity and effectiveness.

Why Caption On?

As the above video demonstrates, there are many purposes and benefits to choosing and creating closed captions. Closed captions are a great method for keeping your audience engaged and avoiding miscommunication. People use captions for a variety of reasons; just a few are:

  • Watching video in sound sensitive environments
  • Supporting additional comprehension
  • Accessibility for deaf, hard of hearing, and multilingual audience members
  • Improving search engine hits

Tell me how

Closed captions can be added in a number of ways depending on where the video lives. We recommend that videos for instruction be uploaded to "My Media (Gallery)" within Canvas. Any videos added to your "My Media" will automatically receive machine-generated captions. Full instructions for editing and ordering professional captions can be found in the Kaltura for Canvas Knowledgebase article. For all other purposes we recommend videos be uploaded to Virginia Tech's Video Portal. If you want someone to check the accuracy and quality of captions that you created, email us at captioning@vt.edu.

Join the campaign

Our goal is to increase the number of videos uploaded to Kaltura either through Canvas or Virginia Tech's Video Portal that have (at least) automatic speech recognition closed captions. You can help us get there by sharing links to your captioned videos on Twitter @VT_TLOS #CALMCaptions or emailing links to assist@vt.edu. Every entry is eligible for some of our Keep C.A.L.M swag.

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