Video/Audio Accessibility

The auto-generated captioning (as found on most YouTube videos) is insufficient for compliance with accessibility. Proper captioning needs punctuation and appropriate word-matching. (If you doubt this, try watching a poorly captioned video with the sound turned off!)

Note: If you're using a video with no dialogue, just background music, it's important to include an explanatory note above the video indicating there is no dialogue. Otherwise, a hearing-impaired student may be concerned they're missing something. Depending on who owns the video, there are several options for ensuring appropriate captioning for the videos you're using in your course.

If you created the video:

• use a video-editing tool (e.g., Canvas Studio, Screencast-o-matic, YouTube) to adjust the captions as needed (see below for additional options)
  OR
• submit the video for captioning from 3CMedia or, if you have many videos in need of captioning, through the DECT grant. 

If you didn't create the video:

• Amara Links to an external site. offers open software for captioning 3rd-party educational videos and an archive of videos already captioned by others. (A free account is required.)
• Add/edit captions using the YouTube "Community Captions" tool Links to an external site.. (Many YouTube users aren't aware of the feature so you may need to request that the owner of the YouTube channel turn it on first.)
• Do a search on YouTube or Google for whatever search terms are appropriate and then filter for “closed captioned.” (You’ll still have to double-check to make sure the captioning is good enough, but it will cut down on the number of obviously bad choices in your search results. =-)) 

What is the Difference between 'Captions' and 'Audio Descriptions'?

Captions provide a text version of dialogue or narrative (for hearing-impaired viewers). Audio description is a verbal explanation of what's happening on the screen (for visually impaired viewers). Here's a nice blog post explaining What Is Audio Description?

Handling Audio

Audio files—spoken content and music with lyrics—must have a complete and accurate transcript provided.

Transcripts, which allow anyone not able to access content from web audio to read the content instead, are an important part of making web multimedia content accessible. Transcripts allow deaf/blind users to get content through the use of refreshable Braille and other devices. 

Transcripts don't necessarily have to be verbatim accounts of every single spoken word (for example, "um" or "uh" could be omitted). They should, however, contain additional descriptions, explanations, or comments that may be beneficial, such as indications of laughter or other relevant sounds.

Canvas Studio Video Captioning + Storage & Sharing

Visit the COC Faculty Resource Course: Canvas Studio to learn where to access and how to use Canvas Studio, including how to:

• Record and edit videos in Canvas Studio
• Request, review, and publish captions to a Studio video 
• Import a YouTube video, and add captions to a YouTube imported Studio video
• Embed Studio videos into a Canvas course.

3C Media Video Captioning + Storage & Sharing

Because audio and video files are so large, it's best not to store them directly in your Canvas course. 3C offers both media storage AND free captioning for instructor-created materials. All COC faculty have been provided with a free 3C Media Solutions Links to an external site. account courtesy of the Chancellor's Office. To use this service, you will need to create an account using your campus email address. Then, there is a 3CMedia LTI that integrates beautifully with Canvas. 

Do You See the 3C Media LTI in Your Canvas Apps? 

From Settings, click the Apps tab. Do a search for 3CMedia. Once you've installed it, it will be available as part of the Rich Content Editor on every page. Yea!