Captioning Guidelines

“Captions are the textual representation of audio content in a video format, communicating spoken dialogue, sound effects, and speaker identification. Captions provide essential access for the more than 30 million Americans with a hearing loss. They also benefit emerging readers, visual learners, non-native speakers, and many others.” (National Deaf Center, 2021).

Types of Captions

• Video Closed Captions
• Live Captions
• On-site CART and Remote CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation)
• Automatic Captions – Note: Automatic captions are not sufficient to meet
  requirements for captioning on public facing content and/or for an accommodation
  request.

Captioning In Practice:

Review the Captioning Decision Guide for more details.

• Captioning for videos:
  • All public facing video content (e.g. on Augsburg’s website) needs to be professionally captioned.
  • If you receive an accommodation request for an internal video by an individual or through the CLASS Office, all videos for the class or event are required to be professionally captioned.
• Live captioning and video closed captions for courses or Augsburg events:
  • If you receive an accommodation request for a course or an event by an individual or through the CLASS Office, professional live captioning services will need to be provided. Professors will be notified by the CLASS Office if there is a student in the course who needs captioning as an accommodation and will coordinate these services. For events, University Events will help coordinate these services.
  • Large events, such as graduation, should have professional live captioning.
  • For internal videos or smaller events for which no captions have been requested, live auto captioning  should be turned on for videos or for Zoom sessions as a best practice.