This guide is intended for instructors who have been notified by Disability Services (DS) about a student(s) in their course(s) with a post-production captioning accommodation. We also recommend that you review the Disability Services faculty roles and responsibilities page. As the instructor, you are responsible for ensuring your course content is captioned according to the timelines below:

  • Once DS notifies you of the post-production captioning accommodation, all video and audio content in your course must be captioned within five business days.
  • After the initial five days, any additional video and audio media used in your course must be accurately captioned by the time the student is asked to access the media.

The Digital Accessibility Office’s (DAO) captioning team is here to help you through the process. Please follow the below steps to fulfill your responsibilities in a smooth and timely manner. 

Step One: Identify media in your course

Review your course materials for the semester to determine if you have any videos or audio. If you do, make a list of the items and the dates by which the students will need to access them. The list should include the following:

  • Media in Canvas 
  • Media screened during class time
  • Media that is embedded in or linked to in course materials (e.g., PowerPoints, readings, and articles)
  • Additional and optional resources for students
  • Media with pre-existing captions or transcripts
  • Plans for student-created media that will be viewable by the student with the captioning accommodation (e.g. peer review assignments)
  • Recordings to be made during class time, including those intended for students who miss class

Tip: If you are obtaining media through the library, request a captioned version of the materials, if available.

Step Two: Consider storage options

When possible, we recommend storing media files in Kaltura (My Media in Canvas). This will result in the fastest possible captioning turnaround time. Please refer to OIT’s Uploading Media in Canvas to Kaltura for a step-by-step guide. 

To learn more about best practices for storing captioned videos, please refer to the Caption-Friendly Video Storage Options page.

Sharing Zoom Recordings

Zoom’s native media player, Zoom Cloud, does not support human-made captions. In order to meet PPC accommodation requirements, any Zoom recordings you plan to share with students must be stored elsewhere. We highly recommend Kaltura. 

Please note that live captions during Zoom meetings/lectures are a separate accommodation through the Disability Services office. For more information, review the Multiple Accommodations section below.

Step Three: Submit the captioning request form 

After compiling the information from the above steps, please submit the Captioning Request Form. Only one form submission per semester is needed. Updates can be sent via email to the DAO captioning team at Captioning@Colorado.EDU. After submitting the form, the DAO captioning team will follow up with additional steps. 

Optionally, you can forgo the captioning request form and fulfill your student’s accommodation yourself. See the Additional Resources section below for more details. 

Step Four: Communicate with students

Please communicate with all students about your course media, including how to access captions. A good time to do this is on the first day of class as you review your syllabus and course expectations.

Additionally, we highly recommend communicating directly with your student(s) with accommodations to check in about accommodation implementation and adjust items as needed. 

Step Five: Notify the captioning team of any new media throughout the semester

It is your responsibility to inform the captioning team about new media with as much advance notice as possible. Please provide the captioning team with at least three to five business days advance notice to ensure the captions can be returned before students access the media.

Additional Resources

Caption Accuracy and Standards

Post-production captioning accommodations require a very high level of accuracy and quality formatting. Auto-generated captions are not sufficiently accurate to meet student accommodation requests and will need to be replaced with human-made or human-edited captions unless a student has indicated otherwise. 

Auto-generated captions and transcripts can be used as a starting point before being edited for accuracy and quality. If you decide to create or edit captions yourself, please review the Captioning Quality Guidelines and DIY Captioning resources. 

Campus Policy

Under campus policy, it is the instructor's responsibility to fulfill students’ post-production captioning accommodations. DS and the DAO captioning team exist as resources to help you meet these responsibilities.

To learn more about campus responsibilities regarding captioning accommodations, please review CU Boulder Digital Accessibility Standards section 2(b). 

Displaying Captions

The DAO captioning team works to implement closed captioning. Closed captions allow viewers to turn captions on or off for themselves while watching a video. When showing videos during class time, please turn on captions since they are essential to students with captioning accommodations and can be beneficial to other students.

Multiple Accommodations

Please note that some students have multiple accommodations, which can include any combination of post-production captioning, real-time captioning, and/or American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting. Different accommodation types are not interchangeable and all accommodations must be met.

The DAO captioning team can only fulfill post-production captioning requests, not real-time captioning or ASL interpreting requests. For support with real-time captioning or ASL interpreting accommodation requests, please contact Disability Services at DSCcommAccess@Colorado.EDU. 

Editing Media

Make all edits to media before captioning.  If captioned content is edited or replaced with an edited version at a later date, the captions will no longer be accurate. When working with the DAO captioning team, please only provide finalized video and audio content. 

If you have further questions about post-production captioning, please feel free to reach out to Captioning@Colorado.EDU.