There are ways to generate captions automatically using automatic speech recognition (ASR). This process, however, is only the first step to providing quality captions. Only human-reviewed captions can meet accessibility standards.
Creating Auto Captions
IC Supported Tools
Several IC supported tools have ASR capabilities. While ASR does not meet the needs of all students, there may be times that it provides some benefit and can be used in situations where alternative accommodations are not available.
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Zoom meetings and webinars that are recorded outside of the Sakai environment will be auto-captioned once the recording is complete. Auto-captions can be edited within Zoom by the meeting host.
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Kaltura is the Ithaca College media service and is accessed through media.ithaca.edu. Videos uploaded to Kaltura will be auto-captioned within 48 hours of upload. Auto-captions in Kaltura can be edited by anyone who has permission to alter the video. More than one caption file can be uploaded to Kaltura. Captions are accessed by clicking the “CC” button on the video player. Kaltura’s auto-captions are labeled “English.” Captions created by SAS are labeled “SAS Captions”.
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Videos uploaded to Microsoft Stream are also auto-captioned using the Microsoft Azure ASR engine. Auto-captions are displayed as an interactive transcript next to the video. Auto captions in Microsoft Stream can be edited or replaced with an alternate caption file.
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Videos created in or uploaded to VoiceThread are automatically captioned. Captions will be available within 5-10 minutes. Auto captions within VoiceThread can be edited or replaced with an alternate caption file.
Frequently Used Non-IC supported tools
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While not quite an IC supported tool, FlipGrid is used extensively at IC. Captions are available within FlipGrid but they must be turned on BEFORE a video grid is created.
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YouTube allows content creators to create captions through the YouTube Studio. Captions can be created from scratch (very long process) or creators can upload transcript files which YouTube will analyze and time to match the video (very helpful process). Creators can edit captions and also provide users with a transcript file.
* As of September 2020, YouTube will no longer allow users to add captions or subtitles to videos they do not own.