If the automatic captioning in Panopto is not meeting your needs, give captioning support a try. Academic Technology Services (ATS) employs Dalhousie students to edit automatic captions, increasing their accuracy. This process normally takes 24–48 hours to complete.
Caption support is available to all Dalhousie instructors.
Closed captioning presents oral information in text form. Including captions is important for accessibility and equitable access to information because captions are critical in making online education accessible to viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Captioning is also a learning aid that helps increase comprehension, accuracy, and engagement for all students and community members, especially those for whom the spoken language is an additional language.
Request closed captioning support
Brittany says
I have had only 1 course in the 2021/2022 school year thus far where there was closed captioning. I don’t know what happened. I’ve been told b instructors they can’t close caption things as it’s “out of [their] hands.”
This is not making things more accessible and can be particularly stressful when you have a prof who mumbles and speaks incredibly fast. It’s taken me several hours to get through recordings around 1h long because of this. I don’t get why so few of my recordings are captioned this year when it was regularly done in literally every year prior I’ve been at dal.
I’m so frustrated and close captioning is accessibility 101. It’s helpful for people who are sensory sensitive, it’s helpful for ADHD, it’s helpful for people who are hard of hearing, and it’s helpful for all students when the recordings are low quality and/or the prof mumbles.
Is it possible to make closed captioning standard procedure again?
Marlo MacKay says
Hello Brittany,
Thank you for getting in touch and sharing your concerns. Closed captioning is indeed helpful for many different learners and we are happy to support closed captioning through the Dal Libraries’ Academic Technology Services Team by offering captioning support for faculty members looking to add captioning to their recorded classes.
Have you talked to anyone at the Student Accessibility Centre (Halifax) or the Student Success Centre (Truro)? They are Dalhousie’s experts on student access, inclusion, and accommodation support. They work with Dalhousie and King’s students, faculty, and staff to create an inclusive educational environment for students. The Centre is responsible for administering the university-wide Student Accommodation Policy working across all programs and faculties. More information and contact info can be found here: https://www.dal.ca/campus_life/academic-support/accessibility.html
Best of luck with your courses this term,
Marlo MacKay, Communications Coordinator, Dalhousie Libraries