Many educational institutions are turning to free video hosting services such as YouTube to reduce cost and increase the use of instructional videos. This session will walk you through the steps necessary to make instructional videos more accessible using YouTube’s free closed captioning functionality.
Video-based instructional strategies in online learning environments possess many pedagogical benefits that positively impact student learning. Beyond better learning performance, use of videos in online instruction improves student engagement. It also increases instructor and learner social presence, which in turn helps facilitate community building. These benefits have been made possible by technological innovations which continue to make the creation of videos easier and the adoption of videos in online instruction commonplace. However, these benefits can only be maximized in the online learning environment when instructional videos are made accessible to all learners, including those with various disabilities.
Although no law has specifically been enacted to require online instructional videos to be compliant with accessibility standards, it can be deduced from existing laws, such as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1996, 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) of 20 and several Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, that compliance is necessary. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, for example, prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs conducted by Federal agencies or programs that receive Federal funding. Two later amendments, Sections 504 and 508, expanded the act’s application with Section 504 making accessibility for individuals with disabilities a civil right and Section 508 demanding accessibility for electronic media. A major requirement needed to make instructional videos accessible as stipulated by Section 508 is closed captioning.
Creating closed captioned videos requires a substantial amount of effort and time. One quick fix is to outsource closed captioning of instructional videos to commercial captioning service providers. The drawback of this approach is that the pricing of the services is usually very high and therefore not the best choice for many educational institutions running on tight budgets. A viable alternative is to use free closed captioning software tools to eliminate costs and ease the process. The YouTube platform is a good example of such free tools. It has the capabilities needed to create closed captioned online instructional videos without breaking the bank.
Using a hands-on approach, this session will walk you through the steps necessary to create closed captioned videos on the YouTube platform. We will focus on how to harness the auto-captioning capability of the YouTube platform to create closed captioned videos that satisfy FCC quality standards bothering on accuracy, time synchronization, completeness, and placement. You need to bring your own laptop computer and have a Google/YouTube account to gain the full benefits of this workshop.