Captioning and Transcribing Media
Faculty and staff – are you or your students working with online presentations, video and other media? An easier way to obtain transcriptions or to captioning for your materials is now possible. You can choose between two service providers Automatic Sync Technologies and 3Play Media -- selected by a cross-campus team and awarded State contracts. The vendor contracts save campus users from the need to search the market, guess at the quality and reliability, explore options and negotiate fees. Faculty and staff can simply create an account and log in to use the service they select at discounted prices.
Create an account and log in to use one of two service providers at discounted prices or review the
side-by-side comparison of both vendors.
UW-Madison Transcription and Captioning Requirements
The UW Madison Policy Governing World Wide Web Accessibility endorses compliance with the Federal Rehabilitation Act’s Section 508 standards, specifically subsections 1194.1 through 1194.22 and 1194.31. Media (audio and video) addresses captioning and transcripts:
(a) A text equivalent for every non-text element shall be provided (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content).
(b) Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation.
The web accessibility guidelines require that captions be synchronized, equivalent to that of the spoken word, and accessible and available to those who need it. For web video, captions can be open, closed, or both. Closed captions are a technique of displaying synchronized captioned text only when the user desires it. Open captions include the same text as closed captions, but the captions are a permanent part of the picture, and cannot typically be turned off.
Captions are essential to viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, benefit those learning English as a second language, and are a great tool for improving the reading and listening skills of others. Other benefits of captioning include making your videos accessible to people who would otherwise have tuned out or would be unable to understand the content of the videos, a better viewing experience, retention of material, higher user satisfaction, search engine optimization, and making video material available to those without sound-capabilities.
Transcripts provide a textual version of the content that can be accessed by anyone, and also allow the content of your multimedia to be more easily indexed and searchable.
