According to the National Center for Education Statistics, students with disabilities make up nearly one-fifth of college enrollment, with more than 20% of undergrads aged 30 and over reporting having a disability while 18% of students aged 15-23 reporting a disability. The most common disabilities reported by college students included attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADD or ADHD), learning disabilities, blindness or low vision, deafness, autism and mobility and speech disabilities.
Colleges and universities are required to provide accommodations to ensure equal access for students with disabilities. These accommodations can include captions for classroom discussions and education videos, assistive technologies like screen reading or voice recognition software, audio described video content and modifications to academic policies and practices, such as extended time for testing, sign language interpreters, or using a computer for written exams.
Regardless of the accommodation, schools need to let students know there are options available for them. Students and universities also need to work together to develop accessibility approaches that work for everyone and find the solutions that enable students to succeed academically.
To explore this topic further, Verbit hosted a webinar – “Ready, Set, Caption: Accessibility Solutions for Fall” – featuring higher-ed experts Jo Hilton, interpreting services manager at Alamo Colleges, and Liz Ramos, video accessibility specialist, at the University of Florida. The live event, hosted Verbit Senior Customer Success Manager Adam Dark, offered tips and strategies for proactively incorporating accommodations like captioning, transcription and ASL-interpretation into campus life and how employing accessibility solutions can help colleges and universities cultivate more equitable learning environments while supporting new and evolving accessibility guidelines.
Click here to watch full webinar
How universities are promoting access
Employing accessible solutions and accommodations is just the first step in providing an inclusive learning environment – schools also need to let students know the resources are available and make it simple for those requesting an accommodation to secure the service.
Ramos said the University of Florida (UF) strives to make students aware at school events and shares information about its Disability Resource Center and its captioning services in orientations and as part of every course syllabus.
“Students have that information right off the bat,” she said. “We also try to just get the conversation about accessibility going with all departments and we have a lot of resources online to try to get people to the right place as easily as possible.”
Hilton said that she largely works with students who are approved for accommodations for a disability by the college’s student accessibility office.
“Sometimes students aren’t aware that they can request captioning… that that’s an accommodation that could help them,” she said. “Once they are identified by the student accessibility office, they are referred to me and I do an intake with them. I present a contract with them so that they understand what is expected, but then also what the process is to actually have the captions come up during their course.”
How to ensure compliance
It’s important that schools be proactive when it comes to accessibility and accommodations and consider access and inclusion from Day One.
The University of Florida, Ramos said, makes a point to work with staff and help them think about how to make their course content accessible before it goes live and arrange courses in a way where captioning is considered beforehand.
Hilton said Alamo Colleges sends out an e-mail to the teachers once a student requesting an accommodation is identified.
“We don’t identify student names, but we try to approach it as a accessibility and let them know that there will either be a student receiving captions or an interpreter in the classroom,” said Hilton. Basically, we’re trying to just provide them with information to help them understand that it’s to help the student be successful in the class.”
ADA Title II updates in 2026
The US Department of Justice recently announced its final rule revising Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), requiring web and mobile application content to be accessible to people with disabilities.
Title II of the ADA applies to all state and local governments, which includes, among other entities, public schools, community colleges and public universities. The rule, designed to ensure all digital services are ADA-compliant, clarifies the obligations of public education institutions to make their websites and mobile apps “readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities,” including via the use of accessible text, images, sounds, videos, controls, animations, and electronic documents.
The standards outline a few requirements for captioned and audio described web content that higher-ed institutions will need to plan for. These include captions for all live and pre-recorded audio and video content and audio description for all pre-recorded video content in synchronized media.
Although enforcement will not begin until 2026 at the earliest, school leaders will need to plan, budget, and, in some cases, implement additional access services to meet the new regulation.
“It is a huge policy change,” said Ramos. “We talk about budgets, we talk with the stakeholders and try to get people well-prepared to kind of shift their focus to be more accessibility centric.
“At UF, we have an accessibility community of practice….and that’s a group that meets about once a month…to see what conversations are people having, what information have people found out that we can share and how to just keep the conversation going. It’s going to be hard to make that big change on your own, so you need everybody on board.”
Simplifying accessibility for instructors
Though most people understand the value that captions can bring to the classrooms, there still might be questions and apprehensions over how easy they are to set up and display.
“Teaching is a be a big part of this in this…and teaching professors and staff how they can easily and accurately caption their videos on their own,” said Ramos. “Because while everybody wants to have everything captioned and they want their content to be accessible, they don’t always have the time to do so.
“So just creating the easiest way possible for them to do that – by creating guides, working with our website designers to just make sure that the information on how to do these things is accurate and not intimidating.”
Hilton said: “Providing resources to instructors, I think, is really helpful. Being accessible to the teachers so that they have an easy access to ask ‘what did you say I do with this?’ or ‘how do I get this?’ I just try to make it as simple as possible so that they don’t feel the burden of having to do anything extra. I think that’s been fairly effective.
Partner with Verbit for educational access
Creating inclusive learning experiences requires specialized expertise. Verbit’s team has the experience, knowledge and technologies, including live and pre-recorded captioning, transcription and audio description, to help. We’re trusted by a variety of colleges and universities, such as San Francisco State University, the University of Arizona and Oregon State University, and others, to make classes and classrooms more inclusive.
Connect with us to learn more about how we can work together to enhance the accessibility of your courses, campus events and more.