The Journey Toward Campus-Wide Accessibility

The ongoing need for accessibility and crafting a more inclusive environment overall has become a key focus of leaders at Virginia Tech. Mark Nichols and Christa Miller of the Technology and Enhanced Learning and OnlineStrategies (TELOS) unit at Virginia Tech spoke live with Verbit to share the progress of their journey toward inclusion. Accessibility initiatives such as their “Keep C.A.L.M. and Caption On campaign” aim to provide captioning powered by Verbit to the full student body, not just to those with disability needs. Other institutional leaders can now look to follow their lead.

What Other Institutions are Saying

Two important questions were posed to live viewers to get a gauge on accessibility technologies at various institutions.

Where The Journey Begins 

‘Next Steps: Post-Production Captioning

Prior to the pandemic, VT’s team was unable to keep pace with the support for accomodation level needs across the university. VT hired student employees who were taking 6-15 minutes of captioning work per 1 minute of video. This was not a sustainable model. However, it was a starting place where Nichols and Miller could build upon their efforts and increase awareness across the university.

Given the ever-increasing need for post-production captioning, Nichols and Miller engaged in a three-step process that can be replicated by other institutions:

With increasing advocacy and campus-wide awareness, the institution decided to enable Verbit’s automatic speech recognition (“ASR”) captions for all videos processed inside the Kaltura video management system, including Zoom recordings. This afforded Miller and Nichols the opportunity to gain momentum in demonstrating to VT stakeholders why post-production captioning was essential and the need for various tools to complement their efforts.

Covid-19 and Live Captioning

The onset of the pandemic in March 2020 caused Nichols’ team to shift its focus exclusively to supporting accommodations. There was a growing need for professional captioning, given that students were taking both synchronous and asynchronous classes.

The university also received feedback from the community that live captioning would better address their needs, which Verbit could provide. While COVID-19 presented unique challenges, it allowed Nichols and Miller to build upon the culture in working toward this critical goal. Senior administrators at the university approved funding necessary to support the push for this technology, as well as a centralized captioning program. The team was able to implement an ambitious campaign in March 2020 entitled “Keep C.A.L.M. and Caption On”, raising awareness on campus as well as training staff members.

The Evolution of Live Captioning and Campus- Wide Support

Individuals across campus expressed the need for a more robust live captioning system. There was a variety of support for this endeavour from several teams on campus, as well as graduate student employees and senior management. This enabled Nichols and Miller to create a more comprehensive system of live captioning via Verbit in the following ways:

Collaborating with VT’s Kaltura, Canvas and Zoom teams to update its enterprise, video content management and learning management systems.

Enabling captions to be clearly articulated in the university’s articles about Zoom and Kaltura.

Opening the lines of communication as to how to request live captioning, identifying who qualifies for the central services and how to access the billing service being pushed through.

Growth Highlights Affecting VT’s Journey

Growth highlights contributing to a higher level of awareness and campus-wide support are as follows:

Zoom automatic transcript feature – enabled by Zoom administrators to expand efforts in areas where they were attempting to build capacity using centralized funding.

Ongoing support for centralized funding – Through the Spring 2021, CAWG recognized the need for continued momentum building in the area of captioning and fully backed and supported new critical needs requests with centralized funding and billable model options.

Expectations for a fiscally-supported endeavor – Nichols and Miller expect captioning will continue to be invested in as the university transitions back to in-person learning.

Gaps & Room for Improvement

Nichols and Miller identified certain gaps that other leaders should consider in their captioning initiatives:

The accessible technologies team was serving as the “accommodation gatekeeper” – Nichols and Miller are continuously working to find new ways to expedite requests and remove additional layers of bureaucracy.

The use of profanity – VT faculty expressed concerns about profanity being translated into captions. Accordingly, TELOS had to develop a profanity filter for all machine-generated captions (filtering does not apply to the post-production professional video content).

Limitations in being able to customize the experience with Zoom captions – Hosts have to remember to enable the live caption feature when presenting video. Nichols and Miller continue to spread the message across campus to “turn it on.”

A Vision of Greater Accessibility and Inclusivity Moving Forward

The following represents TELOS’s next steps:

• Simplify the workflow and develop increasing measures to maintain existing accessibility services on campus, especially in light of staff, faculty and student turnover.
• Expand live captioning in such a way that it does not hinder participation.
• Engage in ongoing efforts to help individuals recognize that a live captioning service is available.
• Support professional transcripts for research and define TELOS’s role further.
• Provide high-level hybrid delivery methods to facilitate post-COVID in-person learning.
• Proactively plan to assist individuals across campus in the digital expansion of their work.
• Consider additional cooperative contracts in Virginia, as the existing agreement is set to expire.

Through strategic planning and university-wide support, Virginia Tech’s stakeholders are engaging in significant efforts to provide campus-wide accessibility and inclusivity for all. Leadership at Verbit supports VT’s ongoing journey in this regard by providing captioning for VT, and creating accurate and speedy transcription that integrates with Zoom and Kaltura. With Verbit in hand, VT continues to engage in efforts to expand upon its captioning initiatives and awareness on campus.