Captioning

Media Captioning

Per CSU policy, Executive Order 926, the CSU is to make its programs, services, and activities accessible to students, faculty, staff, and the public, with disabilities. This includes, but is not limited to, multimedia programs and services as well as multimedia materials. 

"Multimedia" includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, or video regardless of delivery system, e.g., YouTube, PolyLearn, PowerPoint, campus website, etc.  This means that video presentations with audio must be "captioned." Captioning (or subtitles) must be visible "for any time-based multimedia presentation (e.g., a movie, video, or animation.)".

Prioritization Guidance

High Priority:

• An accommodation is requested by a student, staff member, or other person who requires captioning and verified by the appropriate campus authority, e.g., Disability Resource Center, Human Resources, Office of Equal Opportunity, etc.
• The multimedia will be presented multiple times and/or over an extended period of time, e.g., used in a course for more than one term, reused in new courses and newly revised segments of existing course, etc.
• Multimedia is on a public facing web page, e.g. commencement or other public-facing streamed or recorded events, news and marketing videos, informational videos, etc. This includes social networking and other non-university hosted sites officially associated with a Cal Poly department, unit or service.

Other Prioritization Considerations:

• Any multimedia that is purchased should be delivered in a captioned state. If not, captioning will be done upon receipt once proper rights have been acquired. This applies to un-captioned purchased media and online videos belonging to other owners (e.g., YouTube) that may be used in a class or on a website. The employee/department is responsible for securing permission from the copyright holder/content owner or acquiring updated or alternate material with captions.
• Archived materials are to be captioned upon request. Frequently requested materials should be captioned.
• Captioning is a low priority if Lecture capture is used to post a lecture that is a review of a face-to-face class, and will only be available for one term, and you have verified that you do not have an accommodation request.
• If captioning is required for one term only, the quality must be clear enough to allow equivalent access (defined as the ability to infer the meaning of whole sentences).  Note that at this time, dictation software, such as YouTube's automatic captioning, is not acceptable due to the tendency for errors, unless manually fixed by the content owner.