Captioning and Transcription for State Schools

November 30, 2018 BY JACLYN LAZZARI
Updated: June 3, 2019

State schools benefit immensely from transcription and captioning, which both make content more accessible to d/Deaf and hard of hearing students and benefit many types of learners. Additionally, most states schools are required under state laws, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to provide captions for all of their video content. With these legal obligations and the great benefits that transcription and captioning provide, state schools should be proactively working towards making their videos accessible through captioning.

This post will help state schools learn what should matter to them when it comes to captioning, common challenges they may face, and what vendor tools can help them the most.

What is important to state schools?

  • Accuracy: Inaccurate captions are frustrating for everyone, but for students, it can be particularly detrimental to their learning and performance. Many students rely on captions to assist them in their studies, especially those who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing, those whose primary language isn’t English, and those who have learning disabilities. For these reasons alone, accurate captions are a necessity for state schools since it’s imperative that students receive accurate information.
  • Legal Compliance: State schools are considered places of public accommodation and are typically federally funded programs. Because of this, state schools fall under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and are required to caption all of their videos. Many state schools have accessibility laws, known as “mini-508s,” and any public state colleges would have to comply with these state laws. Not only must state schools provide captioning, but those captions must be accurate: the industry standard and best practice for compliance is 99% accuracy.
  • Billing Flexibility: State schools often have many different departments and additional campuses aside from the main campus. State schools need flexible billing options to bill each department or campus separately – and to provide specific administrators access to billing information. A smooth billing process helps to make the entire captioning process painless.
  • Compatability with Lecture Capture Systems: There are many options for lecture capture systems and video platforms and every state school uses the ones that fit their own unique needs. State schools want their captions to be compatible with their lecture capture systems and video platforms to ensure their transcription and captioning process is seamless and efficient.
  • What are common challenges for state schools?

  • Transcribing Complex Content: State schools offer an array of areas of study, with many state schools offering hundreds of degrees and certificates. For reference, the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers over 230 undergraduate majors and certificates. With large amounts of high-level content in varying subjects, it’s a challenge for state schools to ensure their content is accurately transcribed unless it’s done by people with knowledge in subject-specific terminology and vocabulary.
  • International Professors and Students: State schools often have professors and students from many different countries who may not be native English speakers. Professors with an international background may have heavy accents, making it difficult for students to understand – and for speech recognition technology to accurately transcribe their content. Additionally, automated speech recognition alone delivers an 80% accurate transcript at best, which poses a challenge for non-native speaking students who may rely on captions to better understand the material.
  • Managing Multiple Users: State schools often employ students through work-study to help with captioning responsibilities. State schools need a transcription and captioning solution that allows varying levels of user access – not only for student employees but also for faculty and staff across departments.
  • Restricted Budget: State schools have set funding for academic programs and departments, whether it be from private donations or state and federal funding. This requires state schools to operate within a confined budget, which is one of their greatest barriers to captioning. They will look for a transcription and captioning solution which allows them to stay within budget while still maintaining a 99% accuracy rate of their content.

Which captioning and transcription vendor features are most important for state schools?

  • Quality and Guaranteed Accuracy: 3Play Media’s closed captions and transcripts comply with federal accessibility laws. Our captions provide a measured accuracy rate of 99.6%, and we always guarantee over 99% accuracy, even in cases of poor audio quality, multiple speakers, difficult content, and accents.
  • Experienced Transcriptionists: 3Play Media is able to process a broad range of complex content. We have a staff of thousands of transcriptionists and are able to assign complex content to transcriptionists with expertise in specific topics.
  • Cheat Sheets: Our editors are skilled, but sometimes additional help is needed for extra-technical educational content. 3Play Media gives users the option to upload a glossary of terms to their account to assist our transcript editors while they’re captioning videos. State schools can specify best practices for transcribing audio like abbreviations, punctuation, or proper nouns. This feature helps keep content accurate and consistent.
  • Video Platform Integrations: 3Play Media aims to make captioning easy. For this reason, we offer one-click solutions for most major video platforms and lecture capture systems to completely automate your captioning workflow. Adding captions to your video never seemed so simple!
  • Easy Account Management: Once 3Play Media sets a customer up with an account, you can rest assured that it won’t be a complicated endeavor. Each account can support multiple users, departments, and permissions. Account admins have the ability to control user access to any of the core account functions like invoices & billing, uploading, editing, publishing control, and user management. On top of that, we have a support team to help you along the way.
  • Competitive Pricing: Our advanced technology is what enables our competitive prices, but our quality assurance measures ensure that our caption quality is top-notch. We also offer flexible billing, allowing customers to have project level billing for state schools that require multiple departments and campuses to be billed separately or have access to billing information.
  • Audio Description: Accessibility in state schools requires more than just transcription and captioning: it extends to audio description through state laws, or “little 508s,” which apply to state-funded schools. 3Play Media offers high quality, competitively priced audio description services for online video.

State Schools Who Use 3Play Media

University of Wisconsin Madison, University of Virginia, University of Oregon


Get started today! Learn more about captioning and transcription.

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