VIDEO ACCESSIBILITY

Closed Captioning

Most video on the web that provides captions has closed captioning that can be turned on and off by the viewer. The inclusion of SRT and/or VTT files (plain text files that contain captions and subtitle information that includes the sequential number of subtitles and start and end timecode for the subtitles) should be discussed in the project kickoff and should be included in the final deliverables in your scope of work, whether working with UTS or a third-party video production vendor.

Open Captioning

It is recommended that a version of your video be created with open captions for social media sharing, since many videos are viewed on those platforms without sound. One way to do this is to “burn on” captions, meaning that they will always appear on the video, regardless of if the video sound is on or off. Please keep in mind that if you use burned-on captions, you should think about the placement of items like logos and lower third graphics, so that they do not get hidden by the captions.

There are two general approaches to captioning:

• It is common practice to request VTT or SRT files from a video production team as part of your final deliverables. These files will then be uploaded with the final video file to the University YouTube/Vimeo account, or used to burn onto the video. 
• Both YouTube and Vimeo can create captions for you. If using auto-captioning services in YouTube and Vimeo, please know that additional time may be required to copy edit the captions to ensure proper spelling of names, correct punctuation, etc. Third-party captioning services are another option to consider. These video transcription services offer pay-per-minute captioning of videos. All third-party vendors should be vetted by UTS Information Security before they are contracted and paid for captioning work.