Customer story

City, University of London

Facing increased demand and new UK legislation, City, University of London found a way to enhance accessibility by partnering with Verbit to provide high-quality captions at scale.

In a Nutshell

City, University of London found itself struggling to meet the growing demand for captions to provide accessibility to its students under new UK legislation. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) and student volunteers offered cost-effective options, but they couldn’t provide the high quality needed to meet the UK’s new accessibility standards. City now partners with Verbit to deliver high–quality captions at scale to boost accessibility on campus and support City’s obligations under the new law.

"Verbit wants us to get the most out of the service. We have a dedicated account manager that is second to none, and they’ve been incredibly helpful from day one. It's also really helpful to have someone you already know who you can go to with silly questions. There are definitely huge benefits that we have experienced since using Verbit."

Maria Kaffa Assistant Educational Technologist, City, University of London

The Challenge

When the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (PSBAR)’s updated accessibility requirements went into effect, City needed workable solutions for making all new multimedia accessible. The university experimented with several methods to meet the demand for captions, including automated speech recognition (ASR). However, “we quickly realized that the accuracy was not always at the level we had expected,” said Kaffa. ASR’s inaccuracies meant that it couldn’t offer equitable experiences for City’s students.

City needed to:

Meet the standards of updated accessibility laws
Offer greater captioning accuracy over ASR
Scale its accessibility efforts to meet growing demands
Provide user-friendly accessibility tools for lecturers

The Solution

City turned to Verbit for the professional, word–class captioning support it needed. With Verbit, City scaled its captioning efforts without sacrificing accuracy. Now, City is offering much more inclusive experiences to students and helping them thrive with Verbit’s semi-automatic process and user-friendly platform.

"We've been using Verbit since September 2021. We had a one-year contract. We renewed because we liked it so much. Since then, we posted 573 videos or 50,540 minutes of content, which is quite a lot."

Maria Kaffa Assistant Educational Technologist, City, University of London

The Results

More reliable, accurate captions

Relying on Verbit for captioning instead of internal resources led to “marked improvements of grammar use and the number of errors we see overall.”

Scalability to match its demand

With Verbit, City could easily caption any volume of work needed to support students.

Ability to receive captioned files quickly

“Our service is for a 96-hour turnaround, but it’s usually much faster. Honestly, it’s within 24 hours.”

Around-the-clock dedicated support

“Verbit has a little chat button where you get connected to an actual real person. I’ve always had really speedy and really useful interactions with the person on the other side of the chat screen.”

Access to meaningful, helpful data

“There’s a wealth of stats that we can grab from the Verbit dashboard.”

About City, University of London

City, University of London is a leading UK university and home to Bayes Business School, one of the top business schools in Europe. It serves a diverse student body, including over 10,000 undergraduates as well as nearly 9,000 graduate students.

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