Customer story
The University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia currently has 50 students with reported hearing loss, including several in its law school. These students are benefiting from the highly accurate, reliable captions Verbit delivers through Anthology® Blackboard, its learning management system (LMS).
In A Nutshell
UWA’s leaders utilize Anthology to offer students and faculty a suite of solutions for effective learning. Providing accessible learning is a key component of the university’s efforts to ensure student inclusion and success. Since 2017, UWA and Verbit have had a longstanding partnership to deliver course captioning to students via Verbit’s seamless partnership with Anthology.
The Challenge
In the past, UWA explored captioning alternatives and standard Automatic Speech Recognition solutions to support student accommodation requests. However, many providers couldn’t integrate with Blackboard, which made for an inefficient workflow. “One of the musts, in addition to the accuracy, was being able to integrate with Blackboard,” said Yuemei Lim, Manager, UniAccess, The University of Western Australia.
“We measure success and accuracy mainly through feedback. When it's not accurate, we know very quickly and we haven't had complaints. Our students are definitely grateful for that service. They like it.”
The Solution
Verbit’s integration with Anthology allows for quick captioning of courses that UWA and its students can rely on. Especially when it comes to its law school courses, UWA needs to ensure the captions distributed with its videos are accurate, something they couldn’t guarantee when using free, ASR-based captioning tools.
The Results
Access to tools that support accessibility regulations & guidelines
“We have disability education standards that outline specifically what universities or education facilities need to do. We have our overarching Disability Discrimination Act. The education sector needs to provide accessible education and reasonable adjustments to all of their students.”
Technology designed to support the complex needs of legal lectures
“We’re using Verbit mainly for our law lectures because of the accuracy it’s delivered through Anthology or Blackboard. A lot of the other Schools have decided to go with ASR and have a disclaimer that reads, ‘you know, the automatic speech recognition is not 100 per cent’ The law courses want 100 per cent accuracy as then there’s no editing. That’s why we’ve stuck with Verbit for our law lectures, so the students who are Deaf or hard of hearing can access all of the recorded lectures with accurate captioning.”
Meeting set expectations for a quick turnaround
“The lecturers will send the recording or post the recording as soon as the lecture is done and then we send it straight to Verbit. We usually have, I think about a two-day to three-day turnaround, and our students know that, and that’s when they watch the lecture.”
Supporting UWA’s goal of exposing more students to captioning
“Other students [without hearing loss] reap the rewards when captions are put on the video because let’s say the lecture is reused or replayed or they’re in the same unit as someone who is hard of hearing…there’s definitely added benefits, and that’s what I’m trying to push with the Law School to embrace more of. We have a large international body of students where English is not their primary language. The captioning has so many ways that improve their learning.”
Delivering great customer support
“Two years ago, we had a technical issue and the support person was really helpful — went above and beyond — and there hasn’t been any issues since. [My team] gave some really good feedback about [Verbit’s] customer service.”
Assisting an incredible team designed to support student accessibility & success
“I have a team that supports students who have a disability or a medical condition or someone who even breaks their hand a day before the exam. My team will meet with the student, and we’ll come up with a plan as to how they can still achieve academic success regardless of what they’re going through. There’s all these side things in terms of accessibility testing and building awareness of accessibility. Talking to academics if they want to have some advice, if they say ‘Oh, I’m thinking of implementing this in the assignment.’ Any advice on how to make it universally accessible, so we do a lot of advocacy as well.”
All quotes provided by Yuemei Lim, Manager, UniAccess, The University of Western Australia
About The University of Western Australia
UWA is a world top 100 university and prides itself on ensuring students and the community enjoy an equally high-quality experience of the campus, its facilities and websites with many accessibility initiatives in place. Its disability and accessibility services department, known as UniAccess, works to provide students with accommodations to create equal access and help them maximize their academic potential.
Institution type: Four-year public
Location: Perth, Australia
Population: 28,000+
Anthology products: Blackboard