Captioning Live Lectures
Students with an Accommodation for Live Captioning
If you have a student who is eligible for live captioning services, you will receive notification about this from SDS; OEET will assist with the technical arrangements.
Automatic Captioning with Zoom
Instructors now have the option to use Zoom's automatic captioning and live transcripts within a Zoom meeting. All meeting participants are captioned when they speak, and Zoom tried to identify the speaker in the live transcript. Note that the accuracy for Zoom's automatic transcripts/captions do not meet the ADA required levels needed for accommodations; SDS will work with faculty to enable a third-party tool for these needs.
Automatic Captioning within Presentation Software
If you are presenting from PowerPoint or Google Slides, both services have an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) captioning feature. In both softwares, only the speaker's audio is captioned. Therefore, it is best practice to repeat any student questions when using these tools. To turn this on during your presentation, use the following documentation.
Add Captions to a Recording of a Live Session
Captions can be added to recordings of live class sessions, a practice that is beneficial to all learners. Contact the department of Online Education and Educational Technology (
OEET@butler.edu) if you have a student with a stated captioning accommodation from SDS to flag any Panopto video uploaded for captioning. Otherwise, use the following resources to self-caption your recordings. (Note that if you are using the
Zoom/Panopto integration, Panopto will pull in the Zoom transcripts as captions automatically.)
Audio Descriptions
For students with visual impairments, describe any relevant visual content. For example, if you display a graph, instead of saying "As you can see in the graph...", take a minute to fully describe the graph, explaining what is on the x- and y-axis and the relationship shown. Similarly describe charts and important pictures, images, or icons. Visit the
DIAGRAM Center's website for image description guidelines and other training tools.
Distribute Resources Prior to Meeting
If you have a student with a visual impairment, their screen reader will not be able to read slides from a Zoom shared screen. Students with dyslexia and dysgraphia can also benefit from having their own copies of course materials. Send the presentation materials ahead of time or post them in Canvas.
