Closed Captioning
Just as important as providing handicap ramp access to school buildings, administrators must consider the accessibility of the digital content they provide to their learning community, including videos. Providing closed captioning with the videos your schools publishes allows equal access to deaf and hearing impaired members of your learning community.
Captions should be
- Synchronized – the text content should appear at approximately the same time that audio would be available
- Equivalent – content provided in captions should be equivalent to that of the spoken word
- Accessible – caption content should be readily accessible and available to those who need it
Follow these steps to ensure your school is in compliance with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act with regard to online videos.
Adding Closed Captions to Your Videos
Video and live audio files must have synchronized captions. Here at School Webmasters, we use Vimeo to host all of the videos we place on the school websites we maintain.
Our clients have three choices when it comes to adding these closed captions to their school videos:
- Provide us with a video with subtitles already embedded into it. This process will vary depending on the program you used to publish the video.
- Provide us with a .srt file which we can add to the video for you. To do this, you may:
- Upload your video to YouTube, add the captions using YouTube’s built in caption feature, and download the .srt file, or
- Manually create the captions using a text editor like Notepad or Sublime Text.
- School Webmasters professionals will add the subtitles for you at a rate of $2.05/minute ($25 minimum).
However your school chooses to handle closed captions for the videos you include on your website, it’s important to make the process a regular practice. It’s necessary for remaining compliant with accessibility laws, and it’s the right thing to do.