Closed Captioning
Closed captioning is the text version of the spoken word on any multimedia. It is synchronized with the content and is part of ADA compliance for online materials.
Who benefits from Closed-Captioning (CC):
- Deaf or Hearing Impaired: A deaf or hearing-impaired student may request accommodations, but not all hearing-impaired students do. In addition to students, you may have occasions where faculty or staff who are deaf or hard of hearing are viewing your content.
- Loud Environment: You do not know if the learner’s environment is loud, nor do you know the volume of our videos on other computers. What may be loud on my computer can be quiet on yours. This is important, especially if you are a soft talker.
- Language fluency: Captions benefit students who watch videos in their non-native language. It is important to remember that there are students and faculty for whom English is not their first language. Using captions will help second language students and help English students who have a second language professor.
- Cognitive or learning disabilities:
All of the issues above can easily be met with closed captioning as you create your learning videos. It is less time-consuming to do it now than it is to get an accommodation letter and have to scramble to meet the needs.