Captioning

It is vital that instructors select and/or provide accessible media for their courses. These materials should be developed at the time a course is designed, since it may not be known if students who require accommodations will be enrolled in the course until the add/drop period has passed. It is advisable to allow at least two weeks of lead time for all media captioning requests.

RIT has established the following guidelines for captioning media to ensure that RIT creates an educational environment that is accessible to all learners:

• All media used in face-to-face, blended, and online courses will be transcribed and captioned. This includes videos with audio or sign language only content.
• Uncaptioned audio-visual materials may not be provided as course content.
• Media produced, streamed, or otherwise provided as part of a student(s) presentation, for campus and online courses, will be transcribed and captioned if a graded assignment or test, based on the student (s) presentation, is a part of the course requirements.
• Captioned versions of media will be made available for students to review if the material is to be included in exams well in advance of the exam. Instructors may provide a link to the captioned media in myCourses or put it on reserve in the library.
• Conference calls, teleconferences, and audio recordings that are part of a course need to be made accessible with captioning. Instructors must work with Access Services to coordinate real-time captioning when a student request is made.
• Captions provided by YouTube are not always reliable. Therefore, instructors should review captioning for YouTube content before showing it in class. If the YouTube captioning is not accurate, it should be captioned by the CTL Media Services team by submitting a request using the Course Media Captioning Request Form.
• Captioned versions of media must be purchased when available.
• All newly purchased uncaptioned media will be captioned on a priority basis by the CTL Media Services team.
• All media equipment and computers used in classrooms must be capable of displaying captions. Labels with clear instructions for using closed captions will be on all equipment.

Resources are available to all instructors to help them meet the captioning guidelines outlined above. If you need to secure permission from the copyright holder, the process will take longer.

Panopto, RIT’s course video hosting service, allows you to request professional captions for your content directly without the delay associated with a media request. More information is available on requesting captions for content in Panopto. If you need other media captioned that is not in Panopto, such as a video from the internet, please complete the Course Media Captioning Request form.

NOTE: To request captioning for pre-recorded non-course related content, please contact RIT Marketing and Communication. To request live captioning for in-person or Zoom meetings, make a request to the Department of Access Services (DAS).

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 Overview of Captioning and ASL Interpreting in Zoom for details.

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 CTL 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 Course Media Captioning Request Form. Once captioned, you will be notified by email with additional instructions for 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.

Captioning Media You Created

Due to the quicker turnaround time needed for student work, it is generally most appropriate for students to 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 automatic captioning on the Zoom recording. There is not a way to create captions from scratch in Zoom.