Captioning for Training Content

Companies supplying video training content to employees, to applicants, or even to customers are legally obligated to provide accurate closed captions.

Under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers are prohibited from discriminating by disability. By law, employers must provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with a disability; that means employers must include closed captions with their training content.

EEOC vs. FedEx Ground

Unfortunately, some companies have learned this fact the hard way. In 2014, FedEx Ground Package System, INC. (FedEx Ground) was sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for violating the ADA.

FedEx did not provide American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters or closed captioned training videos for situations like new-hire orientations for applicants and safety meetings for employees.

As a company that supplies video training content, how can you avoid a lawsuit like the one filed against FedEx? You must comply with the ADA and practice due diligence when selecting a captioning vendor. Even companies that purchase training content are responsible for ensuring it’s captioned; therefore, companies may refuse to buy third-party content that isn’t already accessible.

Below, we discuss what is important to look for in a captioning solution, challenges you may face, and specific vendor features to look for.

What is important to companies distributing training content?

• • ADA Compliance
    As discussed above, companies must comply with Title II of the ADA – meaning, they must provide closed captions for their training content. Captioning should be a priority for companies, not only to avoid a potential lawsuit, but also to ensure that employees with disabilities are able to engage and interact with important training material fully. When seeking a captioning solution for training content, companies should consider vendors that provide ADA compliant captions. Compliant captions must be accurate and contain as few errors as possible. The industry standard is 99% accuracy, so it’s important to aim for that level of caption quality.
    

• User Experience
  Often, training content is robust and time-sensitive, making it difficult to commit to memory. Still, employers expect employees to retain pertinent information and later apply it to their job functions. Companies look for ways to make their training content more visually stimulating to encourage viewers to focus and retain information. The key is to include engaging tools within the training content that will help with comprehension and focus. In one study on student uses of closed captions, 52% of respondents indicated that captions improved their comprehension of the content, and 20% said it increased their engagement with the material. If captions work this well for educational purposes, who’s to say they won’t work the same way for training?
  

What challenges do companies distributing training content face?

• • Budget
    Most companies have a comprehensive financial plan for their business, and that includes budgeting for different projects. Captioning training content isn’t free, and companies must find a solution that fits within their captioning budget. Captioning in-house is typically unrealistic, since it’s time-consuming and resource heavy. In that case, companies must look for a captioning vendor that offers accurate closed captions at competitive prices.
    

• Translation
  For companies who employ a diverse set of employees, it’s important that things don’t get lost in translation in the training process. Many employees may not be native English speakers; therefore, training content may need to be available in their first languages. In the U.S., Spanish is the second most spoken language, but depending on your workforce you may need to provide other caption translations.
  

Which vendor features are important for companies distributing training content?

• • Guaranteed Accuracy
    3Play Media’s captioning process combines automatic speech recognition technology with human editing, enabling us to guarantee 99% accuracy on all caption and transcript files. If a customer feels their file is below that standard, we will work to fix it.
    
  • Translation Services
    3Play Media provides translation services, offering translation for nearly two dozen languages such as Arabic, French, Spanish, and Hebrew. Translations are done by professional linguists so you can rest assured that the translations are accurately communicating your training content.
    
  • Interactive Transcript
    Videos may be engaging on their own, but sometimes they need added features to keep viewers watching. Our 3Play Plugin has an interactive transcript feature which allows users to search and navigate the video in a new way. Not only does an interactive transcript make training content more engaging, but it also makes it accessible.
    

• Playlist Search
  When it comes to training content, there’s no such thing as being too engaging. 3Play Media offers Playlist Search, which allows viewers to search across an entire video library. This plugin puts all of your videos into one place and displays them in a visually appealing format. For example, if an employee needs to look up safety material, all they need to do is type “safety” into the search bar, and all relevant training content will appear in the search results.
  
• Competitive Pricing
  3Play Media wants to work with companies to make their training content accessible and recognize that many companies may have a captioning budget. We offer competitive pricing and have three different pricing plans from which to choose: Express, Pro, and Enterprise. The plan you choose will depend on the unique needs of your company.
  

Companies Using 3Play Media for Training Content

• Oracle
  Oracle University, an on-demand video training program, captions 100% of their training content. In the webinar, Improving Engagement and Comprehension of Training Videos the Oracle Way, Oracle’s Ben Labrum discusses how adding captions and interactive transcripts to videos lead to greater student comprehension and engagement.