Spotlight on University Accessibility

The need for effective online education and corresponding materials to help remote students succeed has been greatly exacerbated by COVID-19. Making content more accessible to all, especially students who are hard of hearing, has been one of the main goals of Virginia Tech’s leaders in 2020. As such, VT has been implementing professional captions and transcripts to its materials to enable inclusive access to all components of the learning experience.

To accomplish this goal, Mark Nichols and Christa Miller of the Technology EnhancedLearning and Online Strategies (TLOS) unit at Virginia Tech established and launched an inspirational university-wide captioning initiative cleverly named “Keep C.A.L.M. and Caption On.” This initiative recognized that both a cultural shift on campus, as well as in the institution’s boardroom were vital. Nichols and Miller shared their process during a live event with Verbit, which you can watch here, to help inspire other educational professionals to follow suit. They showcased that meeting the growing need for accessible resources is possible. It just takes an effective solution that university stakeholders can get behind.

Common Challenges Faced By Accessibility & Inclusion Professionals

Virginia Tech faced the following challenges, many of which are being experienced by universities, digital accessibility and disability departments across the globe.

• The need to address the high-demand and captioning requests from students, especially in light of COVID-19
• Long turnaround times on captions, taking ~6-16 minutes to caption a one-minute video in its previous process
• Account for bandwidth issues and a lack of manpower to provide accessibility measures
• Meet ADA compliance and web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) to provide accessible educational materials for all

Inspiration from a Successful Campaign: “Keep C.A.L.M. and Caption On”

Universities looking to build out their accessibility initiatives can learn a great deal from Miller’s and Nichols’execution of a detailed plan, including how they secured funding approval to scale and incorporate live captions into university coursework. In March 2020, VT leaders received the green light to centralize their captioning program. The ambitious campaign involved implementing captions across VT’s materials, raising awareness on campus, as well as providing training to staff members. Here’s how they pulled it off:

1. Strategic partnerships

The university uses Zoom for video conferencing and Kaltura for video content management, both of which support captions. The captions were generated in partnership with Verbit, which integrates with their preferred platforms to make for an easy process and lift for VT users.

2. Student outreach and engagement

Students on campus were made aware of the campaign through various marketing methods, including KEEP C.A.L.M. flyers, stickers and social posts. Their catchy slogan, “Just turn it on,” played into the ease of use of the caption feature, helping to spread awareness of this capability across campus.

“The goal with our team is to make learning available to the broadest possible audience,” Nichols said. “Tackling the awareness and the adoption of captioning…we were laying the foundation for systemic change.”

3. Support & training

The team first partnered with an internal support and documentation team to ensure everything was running smoothly without third-party involvement. The tools were then incorporated into existing training sessions and even stand-alone caption-centric events.

The team also created a site with key resources, such as slide decks, and with points about the importance and use cases of captioning in order to serve as explainer materials and build greater faculty awareness.

The Benefits of Inclusive Media for All

Important benefits of using technology to make learning more inclusive include:

1. Ease of use that can help all faculty & students

Beginning in December 2020, faculty will no longer need to request ASR and professional post-production captioning, which can put an extra strain on faculty; they’ll populate automatically in Kaltura. Interactive transcripts will be available for all students across campus. Having every word documented will help not just students who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing, but all students. Being able to search the transcript for keywords spoken during a video or lecture will provide better navigation for students and save them valuable study time.

2. Cost efficiency to serve more students

School leaders constantly are struggling with who qualifies and who doesn’t for live captioning and reviewing these qualifications on a case-by-case scenario. For professional captioning services, a reverse-billing model was implemented. The centralized fund is not a bottomless pit and requests have to meet certain criteria in order to use the resource.  However, using a cost-efficient provider can help schools to save costs by automating more processes, thereby being able to service more students.

3. Live captioning capabilities, especially with online learning being the norm

Technologies like Verbit’s are advanced and offering not just post-production but live captioning of lectures and meetings happening on platforms like Zoom. Live functionality means students with disabilities or specific needs can participate more effectively live with their peers. With centralized funding from the university, captioning for both post-production and live Zoom sessions is now widely available at Virginia Tech. With a centralized process and a tech partner in place, the procedure of contacting vendors, setting up payments and manual efforts is no more.

Conclusion

Through strategic planning, Virginia Tech’s leaders are making headway on the path toward inclusive media for all. Verbit’s leadership is humbled to have been selected as the backbone for all automatic speech recognition (ASR) captioning requests at VT, providing accurate and speedy transcriptions that integrate with Kaltura and Zoom. The university is continuing to expand its footprint of accessibility.

“Accessibility is definitely a journey and not a destination,” Miller said.

Visit Verbit today for information on implementing live captions and transcripts for a more inclusive learning experience.