Making audio and video accessible

To think inclusively, you should plan your production well so you do not miss anything. The directive states that users who are unable to access audio or video recordings should have an opportunity to assimilate the content with the help of an alternative representation and this can be done in various ways.

Audio and video production

The guidelines state that video productions must be interpreted visually and by this is meant that you describe things that are important to those who cannot take part of the visual content. One way of visual interpretation is to use verbalisation, where you describe content visually.

If you make a video, it must have captions in the language spoken in the video. University West uses streaming service Canvas Studio, which has automatic captioning built in. You can also caption audio files in Canvas Studio, but another option is to offer a text document version of the audio recording.

Script

Planning is key. If you have a script that you stick to, you can ensure that you do not miss anything, such as a verbalisation of an image or graph you show in your presentation. In addition, the presentation often becomes clearer and this makes it easier for the automatic subtitling to interpret the language. This means that you save time in the finishing work. If you make an audio recording, you can then reuse your script for a text version that you publish together with the audio file.

How do I caption a video?

All videos uploaded to Canvas Studio are captioned automatically. When the captions are ready you must review and publish the captioning for it to appear on the video. Guide: Upload and caption a video in Studio.

How do I handle audio files?

You can caption audio files in Canvas Studio. They will play in a video player with a black image. Another option is to add the audio file directly to a Canvas course. If you already have a script, publish it as a text version with the audio file. Then you don’t need to caption the audio file.