[Accessibility_sig] Captioning requirements on supplemental materials

[Jan Heck]

Thanks so much, Sean. In this case, this instructor is currently teaching
the class face-to-face, and I'm not quite sure where she's posting the video
clips. However, she does hope to offer the class in an online format in the
future, and wants to use these same lecture videos. So my gut feeling was
that, if she wanted to use the videos in future semesters (whether online or
F2F), and since there's no way of predicting whether or when a deaf or
hard-of-hearing student might enroll, she'd be much better off to caption
now. Nobody wants to start a new semester and suddenly realize they have a
backlog of dozens of hours of video that need to be captioned yesterday. I
also believe we are supposed to be proactive rather than reactive in these
matters, or it's the disabled student who pays the price (e.g., waiting for
the captioning to get done).

But others in the college seemed to strongly believe that captioning is only
necessary on "required" vs. "optional" video materials, and while I doubted
it (how can we deny a deaf or hard-of-hearing student the same review
opportunities that we offer to hearing students, optional or not?!?), I just
thought I'd better check. 

So thanks again for confirming what seemed like the only right thing to do,
even setting legalities aside. 

~ Jan

--
Jan Heck (jheck at coastline.edu)
Instructor, Accessible Learning Technology
Coastline Community College

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Keegan [mailto:skeegan at htctu.net] 
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 3:19 PM
To: Alternate Media
Subject: Re: [Accessibility_sig] Captioning requirements on supplemental
materials

Hi Jan,

 > When an instructor in a classroom-based class tapes every lecture using
 > Camtasia Studio and produces videos, and posts these on the Web as
 > supplemental materials (i.e., not required, but just provided in case
 > students wish to review the lecture), are those videos required to be
 > captioned?

I do not believe that the existence of the materials as supplemental or 
required is the issue.  If the materials are provided for student use, 
then the materials need to be in an accessible format.

That being said, a few questions:
- are the materials within a closed LMS (e.g., Blackboard/WebCT, Moodle, 
etc.) that does not allow for general public participation?  In other 
words, the availability of the materials are restricted.
- Are the materials being re-used in that environment (i.e., archived 
for use next quarter/semester?).
- Is there a need in this class to provide captions for a student who is 
deaf/hard-of-hearing?

If the answers are "These materials are *not* available for general 
public use" AND "The materials will *not* be archived or reused again in 
a subsequent course, quarter, semester", AND "There are *no* students 
who need the materials captioned", then you are probably okay to not 
caption.

For a complete legal answer, I would recommend checking with your campus 
legal counsel or the CA Community College System Office.

take care,
Sean

Sean Keegan
Web Accessibility Instructor
High Tech Center Training Unit of the California Community Colleges