Video Captioning

For Students

  1. Immediately after registering for classes, students will need to submit their current schedule to the Accessible Media Office.
  2. The Accessible Media Office will contact all of the student's instructors in order to determine whether videos will be used during the semester.
  3. If there are videos referenced on the student's syllabus, it is requested that the student submit a copy of the syllabus to the Accessible Media Office.

If students do not provide their schedules to the AMS office at least 8 weeks prior to the beginning of the semester, we cannot promise that any videos will be captioned in time for the start of the semester, and cannot be held responsible if they are not ready for class.

For Instructors and Staff

 

In accordance with federal law, ALL INSTRUCTORS  (as agents of the University) are required to make all classroom materials available to students with disabilities at the same time that it is made available to all other students.  All videos and/or clips that you plan to show during the semester must be checked by you for closed captioning.  In the event that any videos (whether shown in class, or assigned outside of class) are scheduled to be shown, please follow these instructions:

1.  Check your videos to ensure that they are captioned.

·         If you are checking a video out from the library their web page will list whether the video is closed captioned.

·         If the video is a web-based video, check for captioning when it's playing online.

2.  If any of your videos are NOT captioned, there are several things you can do:

·         Check to see if the library owns a copy of the video already captioned.  We will not caption a video that the library already has available with captioning.  If the library owns the video, but it is not captioned, let us know and we will have the library send it to us for captioning.  Then you would check it out from the library as usual.                                                                                                                                       

·         If your video was taped from your television, we cannot caption it due to copyright restrictions.  You would need to see if the video is in the library or can be rented or purchased already captioned.

·         If the library does not own it, you should request that the library purchase the video.

·         If it is available captioned, they can loan it to you as soon as it's received.  If it is available for purchase, but not captioned, then the video can still be requested as a new purchase from the library.  They will send it to us for captioning,  and you would just check out the video from the library.                                                                                                                       

·         If you personally own the video, we can do the captioning here, provided that there is not a version available for purchase already captioned. In this instance, you  should be aware, that due to copyright restrictions, only one version of the video can be in circulation.  This means that we cannot give you both the captioned and the uncaptioned videos.  We are required to keep the original copy (we will return to you the case that the video came in).

Please be aware that we must obtain copyright approval from the copyright holders before we can caption the video.  This can take 6-8 weeks, so keep this in mind when you are considering videos to be shown.

While we realize that instructors want to show the most relevant, up-to-date videos that they can find, it will now become imperative that some planning ahead take place.  In the event that you might find a video after this 6-8 week time period, please contact us as soon as possible to inquire about options.  Showing videos in the classroom, when there is an identified student with a hearing impairment in the class is not only bad practice, but could put the university at risk for a federal complaint.  We will work with instructors to come up with a viable solution.

Material can be sent to Angella Anderson and Ann Fredricksen at dres-accessible-media@illinois.edu or to the Accessible Media Office at Disability Resources and Educational Services, MC-574.  We can also be reached at 244-3983 or 244-5785.

IF YOU NEED ASSISTANCE IN TURNING ON CAPTIONS FOR YOUR VIDEOS
Download this Word document (.doc) to learn how to turn captions on in Media Player, Real Player, Flash, and QuickTime.