By Charlotte Gregory-Ellis, Learning Technologist (Curriculum Development)
From recorded lectures to module introductions and course materials, video content is an important part of the student learning experience. However, ensuring that these videos are accessible to all students requires accurate captions.
Video sharing platforms like Panopto provide automatic captioning to all videos recorded or uploaded, these captions can often be edited to ensure accuracy to support accessibility.
Why Accurate Captions Matter
Captions do more than provide an accessible experience for students. They benefit many types of learners and ensure compliance with accessibility standards and regulations. Here’s why captions are essential:
- Enhancing Accessibility: Captions provide vital access to content for students who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have auditory processing disorders. Captions make it possible for all students to fully engage with video content.
- Supporting Diverse Learning Needs: Many students benefit from captions, including non-native English speakers and those who prefer multimodal learning (using both visual and auditory inputs). Captions can help students retain information, review complex material, and ensure they don’t miss key details.
- Meeting Legal and Institutional Requirements: Providing accurate captions ensures compliance with these regulations, preventing potential legal issues and aligning with institutional commitments to inclusivity.
- Enhancing Content Searchability: Within lecture recording platforms like Panopto, captions improve the searchability of videos, allowing students to search for specific terms or topics within a video. This feature is especially valuable for students’ reviewing material within lengthy lecture recordings.
Captioning Tools in Panopto
- Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Captions.
Panopto’s ASR tool automatically generates captions using voice recognition technology. While this feature is helpful for generating a first draft of captions, it often requires significant editing to ensure accuracy, especially in academic contexts where technical language and proper nouns are common.
- Manual Caption Editing.
Panopto allows users to manually edit captions generated by ASR or add captions from scratch. Editing captions manually ensures higher accuracy and allows for customisation of terms specific to academic content.
Tips for Creating Accurate Captions with Panopto
Accurate captions require a combination of good practices and Panopto’s editing features; guide to editing and deleting captions. Here are some key tips for academics aiming to create high-quality captions:
- Start with ASR but Edit Thoroughly: Panopto’s ASR captions provide a useful starting point, but they often contain errors in grammar, punctuation, and technical terminology. After generating ASR captions, review each line carefully, paying particular attention to course-specific terms, names, and key concepts.
- Focus on Clarity and Precision: Accurate captions should clearly convey the speaker’s intended message. This means correcting spelling and punctuation, using appropriate capitalisation, and ensuring that complex terminology or names are correctly transcribed.
- Break Captions into Manageable Segments: To improve readability, break longer captions into shorter segments, ideally between 1–3 lines per caption. Each segment should represent a complete thought, making it easier for students to read along. This approach helps ensure that captions are displayed in sync with the speaker’s pace.
- Add Speaker Identifications and Sound Descriptions: If a video includes multiple speakers, indicate who is speaking to avoid confusion. Additionally, consider adding brief descriptions of non-verbal sounds if they contribute to understanding the context, such as “[applause],” “[door opens],” or “[laughter].” These contextual cues make the video experience richer and more inclusive for students who rely on captions.
- Seek Feedback from Students: Gathering student feedback on caption quality can be invaluable. Students with different accessibility needs or language backgrounds can provide insights into how readable and accurate the captions are, allowing for ongoing improvements.
Conclusion
Incorporating accurate captions in Panopto videos is a powerful way to ensure that your teaching materials are accessible, inclusive, and beneficial to all students. By leveraging Panopto’s captioning tools and following best practices for editing and clarity, you can create videos that support diverse learning needs, meet institutional and legal requirements, and enhance the accessibility of your modules.