On the internet, videos are the best multimedia format to relay content to your students using both visuals and sound. But video can have some limitations with certain users. This article covers some considerations with accessibility and using video.
Captions
Videos provided for your students should have captions and audio descriptions for them. These can be helpful for not only people that have disabilities related to their hearing but also for people where English is a second (or third) language.
Kaltura Captions
Kaltura has an auto-captioning feature to uploaded videos. That said, they only have about a 70-80% accuracy due to limitations of the software. For your video to be fully accessible, the captions should be checked and edited to make sure what is being said and heard is correct. Captioning does take time and effort to do depending on how long the video is, so if time is a problem, try focusing videos that will be more permanent to the course.
UMN IT has an article on how to find and edit captions in Kaltura. Kaltura Learning also has a great short video on how to edit captions.
YouTube Captions
In general, ATD advises the use of Kaltura for media that you produce for your courses. If you do check out the tutorial Add subtitles and captions from the YouTube Help page.
General Captioning Tips
For further tips on captioning:
- Top Tips For Captioning Like A Pro
- This article on sound effects and music from Described and Captioned Media Program can help with how to describe sounds and music in video captions.
Videos in Canvas
Videos can be added to courses as web links or embedded videos. Each has a good use case in a course. We will explore the options and what to consider.
Links to Videos
You can easily get a link to a video to add as an external link to the course. You can get a shareable link from a Kaltura video or a sharable link from a YouTube video.
This is a simple way of integrating it into Canvas content since it is easier to move around in the Rich Content Editor and also doesn't take up lots of screen real estate.
Embedded Videos
Embedded videos are great if you are wanting to draw more immediate attention to a video. Adding a Kaltura embedded video is a great way to embed as video in an Announcement, for the Welcome page for the course, or maybe you use one for a Module Overview in the Resources area. They can look great in the context of your course but too many can be a bad thing for usability. If you put in too many embedded videos, they can distract from other content on the page. When adding embedded videos it is worth thinking about it's placement and context. Typically one embedded video is suggested on a page but sometimes more is needed and we suggest no more than 3 embedded videos per page. If you are wanting to embed a series of videos, making a Kaltura playlist is recommended.
If you need help with linking or embedding videos or playlists, reach out to ATD through the Course Assistance form and we are more than happy to assist!
