After your event: Captioning and Audio Describing Videos

• Toolkit for Planning Accessible Events at UCSF
  • Policy Requirements
  • Consultation and Guidance
• Planning Accessible Events
  • Hybrid Event Accessibility
• Responding to Requests for Accommodations
  • Potential Accommodation Requests and Definitions
• How to Schedule Accessibility Vendors
  • Non-exhaustive possible list of third-party vendors
• Accessible Publicity Materials
  • Accessible Documents and Presentations
• Preparing for ASL/CART Captioners at Your Event
  • Accessibility Considerations for Break-out Rooms
  • Final Accessibility Check: Day of Event Considerations
• After your event: Captioning and Audio Describing Videos
  • Non-exhaustive list of vendors
• UCSF Resources
  • Glossary of Terms
  • Acknowledgements
  • Works Cited

• Use a captioning service such as Rev or 3Play Media that provides both captioning and transcription services.
• Low-cost, fee-based service that provides quick turnaround time and best for accuracy.

• Captions generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) are not generally considered as accurate as professional captions created by human captioners.
• To ensure captions meet UCSF accuracy standards, any captions produced with AI will need to be edited before the video is posted online.
• There are several platforms where you can add/edit captions including YouTube, Microsoft Stream, and Vimeo. You can then make corrections with a caption-editing tool (e.g., Amara) and embed the captions within your video.

• Audio Description (AD) provides blind and low vision users with a description of the visual content contained in videos. It describes the relevant visual information of a video in an audio format, so that users with visual disabilities can access what sighted users see in that video.
• Example: Video with audio description

When to include audio description

• Audio description is required when important information is visually shown on the screen that cannot be seen by people who are blind or have low vision.
• For example:
  • An object, person, landscape, or action is shown on the screen that is not referred to verbally but has importance to the information being conveyed.
• Learn more: 
  • WebAIM: Captions, Transcripts, and Audio Descriptions.
  • Example of Audio Description

Options for adding audio descriptions to your videos:

• Use a third-party vendor to create audio descriptions. Below is a non-exhaustive list of possible vendors:
  • 3PlayMedia - low-cost option for audio description.
  • YouDescribe is a free web-based tool that allows anyone to record audio descriptions of YouTube videos.

Describing Videos

The easiest and low-cost method is to teach presenters how to verbally describe the visual content in their presentations. If presenters describe the visual content, the required amount of audio description can be reduced or even eliminated.

Example:

• A video includes a diagram, chart, or graph.
• Instead of saying "You can see the details in this diagram," the presenter can say "This slide shows a Venn diagram with four circles that overlap in the center. Circle 1 shows x, circle 2 shows x, circle 3 shows x, and the fourth circle shows x."
• Or "A man enters, looks at the water, and quickly exits."