Captioning Course Media
The Provost has established guidelines for captioning media to ensure that RIT creates an educational environment that is accessible to all learners. Please provide the RIT Student Guidelines for Captioning Audio-Visual Media in your classes that require student presentations.
Instructors: Captioning Media You Created
Media used in credit-bearing courses may be submitted by instructors for professional captioning free of charge.
- For videos stored in Panopto, request professional captioning from the video's settings. Note that professional captioning turnaround time is about a week, so plan accordingly. We encourage faculty to request captioning prior to the start of the term, this allows for adding time should captions need to be edited for improved accuracy. Optionally, instructors can instead generate automatic speech recognition (ASR) captioning on their videos and edit the ASR captions, or they can manually type captions on Panopto Videos.
- For videos created in Zoom, there are multiple methods to get captions. Review Captioning and ASL Interpreting in Zoom for details.
Students: Captioning Media You Created
Due to the quicker turnaround time needed for student work, it is generally most appropriate for students create their own captions from scratch or edit automatically-generated captions.
- Students creating videos using Panopto for assignments or for use in myCourses discussions can enable automatic speech recognition (ASR) generated captions and edit them or they can manually type captions on Panopto Videos.
- Students creating videos using Zoom can edit the automatc captioning on the Zoom recording. There is not a way to create captions from scratch in Zoom.
Instructors: Captioning Media You Did Not Create
RIT has created an official stance regarding Copyright, Fair Use, the TEACH Act and other accessibility laws and considerations. Please review the RIT Copyright Policy that addresses the use of all media at RIT.
If you are interested in captioning a film, consult with your Librarian to have the media licensed for streaming.
For other media types, first verify that your media adheres to the guidance of the RIT Copyright Policy. If yes, then ILI Media Services can request professional captioning for English language media from a variety of formats and host it on our streaming server (Panopto) for use in myCourses. To initiate a captioning / transcription request please submit a Captioning Request Form. Once captioned, you will be notified by email with additional instructions or inserting the media in your course.
Media Services does not have the legal expertise to advise faculty on the RIT Copyright Policy. If you have questions about the policy, we would recommend contacting the RIT Office of Legal Affairs.
