Barnard Captioning Information and Request Process

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Institutional Captioning Plan

As of Fall 2020, Barnard College is implementing an institutional captioning plan. In order to be in compliance with our institutional obligations under both Section 504 and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973-- laws that require both educational programmatic accessibility and website accessibility-- the newly-created Barnard Digital Accessibility Working Group has evaluated our campus-wide needs for both real-time and post-production captions. Our guiding principle as a group is to address the ways in which we must level the playing field in digital spaces & digital learning, in keeping with Barnard’s commitment this year to provide support for faculty and students around remote teaching and accessibility, as noted in President Beilock’s July 30th communication to the community about access and racial equity. As a Working Group, we have identified the following objectives:

1. Barnard will create a consistent institutional captioning request process through which all departments can both schedule real-time captioning and submit produced content for post-production captioning; and
2. Barnard will utilize a centralized captioning model, in which there is an institutional budget line item set aside specifically for captioning. This allows for greater institutional compliance by taking the financial burden off of individual departments.

We are pleased to announce that Barnard’s institutional captioning vendor is now Verbit. Verbit will allow us to provide both real-time and post-production captions for Barnard events and video content. Verbit uses a combination of their own proprietary artificial intelligence software to generate an initial transcript which is then checked and corrected for accuracy by human editors. Verbit can work particularly well with the digital environment as it has integrations with platforms such as Zoom and YouTube. Verbit can provide both real time live transcription for students with accommodation needs as well as post-production captioning for pre-recorded content. Verbit’s platform Live Room allows students with accommodation needs to seamlessly schedule captioning for their course lectures in real time without needing to rely on faculty intervention in the setup process. For more information on Verbit, please view our Verbit Information page.

Defining Terminology

Real-time captions provide access for individuals with hearing loss to classroom material for live lectures (as individual student accommodations through CARDS) as well as provide access for live events (such as admissions sessions, student programs or community events). 

Post-production captions provide access for Barnard community members and/or prospective students to video content created by the college for marketing/promotional purposes. Other uses of post-production captions can include videos that are provided by individual faculty members as part of their course content. 

Considerations for Requesting Real-time Captions for a Barnard Event

• The first thing to consider is whether your event is open to the entire Barnard community and/or the general public. If the answer is yes, you should submit a real-time captioning request according to the below procedure. 
• If your event is not a public event and/or requires an RSVP, we recommend that you include the following question on your RSVP form (or otherwise make clear that attendees can request captioning for the event):  “Would you like to request access to real-time captions as a disability-related accommodation for this event?”
• If an attendee indicates on the RSVP form that they are requesting access to captions, please submit a real-time captioning request according to the below procedure. 

Please note that we require two weeks of lead time in order for captioning requests to be accommodated. While we will accept late requests, please be advised that they may not be able to be accommodated.

Real-Time Captioning Request Procedure

For Events hosted by the Department:

Submit a Real-Time Captioning Request Form. Please be advised that you will be asked to designate a point person from your area for this event. CARDS will schedule the event with Verbit and then follow up with the event point person.

For POST-PRODUCTION Captioning Requests:

Once your event has concluded, please submit our Post Production Captioning Request Form along with a copy of the media file you would like captioned. Please note that this media file should be edited prior to submitting for the best captioning results. Post-production requests typically take 5 business days to complete. Once your file has been processed, we will return it to you with information about how to add these captions to the file in Panopto.

Troubleshooting captioning for your event

Here are some important set-up instructions for how to set up a captioner within the event, which can be found below:

1. Prior to the start of the event, make sure that you enable Closed Captioning in your Zoom settings.

The host of the meeting should have Closed Captioning enabled on their Zoom accounts in order to view the Live captions on their screen.

To enable closed captioning, go to https://zoom.us/profile/setting and navigate to the In Meeting (Advanced) section. Click the ‘Closed captioning’ toggle to turn it on.

2. At the start of the Zoom Meeting, you'll need to make sure the captioner is designated as such within the Zoom meeting.

The host of the meeting can either:

a. Send the API token key to Verbit Captions through Zoom chat. The API token can be obtained in the Zoom's control panel. Click on Closed Captions (CC) then Copy the API Token.

b. Delegate Verbit Captions as the captioner of the meeting. For more information about this process, go here: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/207279736-Getting-started-with-closed-captioning

The rest of the integration setup will be handled by Verbit Captions from this point. Once the setup is complete, all meetings will have closed captions by default.

For more information, please view this guide from Verbit, which has screenshots of the process:  https://verbit-ai.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360014616779-The-Role-of-the-Zoom-Host-Manage-the-Meeting