Utah State University boosts video accessibility with captions

Closed captioning, also known as subtitles, is a crucial feature for online videos and television shows that is often overlooked. This feature is essential in making these types of media accessible to viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing. Utah State University (USU) has recognised the importance of closed captioning in enhancing media accessibility and promoting inclusivity.

USU leadership developed a video and accessibility guideline in July 2022 that mandates captions be included on all videos from now on. All users can watch videos with video subtitles since they give a text representation of auditory content. With the help of this function, USU can reach a wider audience with the programs and people it offers.

Megan Spackman was hired as the caption program coordinator with the newly formed Digital Accessibility Services team in December 2022 to support this brand-new standard. The amount of USU videos on YouTube with captions increased from 22% in December 2022 to 82% by April 2023, with 8,899 videos having captions, thanks to Spackman and this recently established norm.

In a statement, Spackman said, ‘It is incredible to see how far we’ve come. Finding the channels is an accomplishment in itself because when we began this project, we had no idea how many USU YouTube channels were even out there. Not only do we have an inventory of those now, but we’ve gone from having less than 25% of channels captioned to over 80% of them captioned… so it’s really a big jump and a big accomplishment that we’ve been able to raise that percentage so much’.