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The Center for Learning Culture at St. Johns River State College

Fundamentals of Course Accessibility

Videos: Getting to Green

Videos 

Whether it's a video you made yourself or one someone else made that you've selected, if it's in your course you must ensure the video is accessible to all students. 

Perfect Accessibility Score iconGetting to Green

Closed Captions are a minimum requirement

At a minimum, all videos must be closed captioned. Closed captions include a transcription of the dialogue and typically include audio cues such as music or sound effects. Use Canvas Studio to add captions to videos.

Note: Zoom captions and transcripts do not automatically save in Canvas Studio along with the Zoom recordings. However, you can manually download captions and transcripts from Zoom and upload them to Studio, or you can add captions for the Zoom recording in Canvas Studio.

Video Descriptions may be required

Visually impaired students may require video descriptions in addition to closed captions. A video description is "an audio-narrated description of a video's key visual elements. These descriptions are inserted into natural pauses in the program's dialogue."  For example, if you filmed yourself drawing a circuit on a whiteboard, you would need to describe what you were drawing. Below is an example that features a machine-created video description created by a vendor that provides this service.

A screen-readable transcript of closed captioning may meet legal requirements if the closed captions include visual descriptions. 

The Center is an initiative of the Learning Culture & Innovation department.