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Captioning and Transcriptions Project

King's has recently approved funding to support a project to improve the captioning/transcription provision of our lecture content. You can read more about it.

Kaltura Human Caption Service 

This new captioning option will be available from Monday 30th November for lectures (both synchronous and asynchronous).

With this service, captions will now be produced by people, rather than automatically generated by a machine. They may take up to 7 days to complete.

This new service aims to provide higher accuracy captions than the machine-generated version. 

Please note: 

  • Priority should be given to those modules that have disabled students who will directly benefit from captions and more accessible content.
  • Particular focus should be placed on responding to feedback where students have indicated they are struggling to access and engage with the content. 
  • Recordings for core modules and those likely to be repurposed in the future should also be prioritised.

How to request

  • You can access the new service by selecting it on KEATS similarly to requesting machine-generated captions.
  • Please make sure the lecture submitted is the final version. It is much more difficult to edit lectures that have already been captioned.
  • If you have any issues with the service please place a service request through 88888@kcl.ac.uk or through Self-Service.

 

 

More information about the Captioning project

The new Captioning project is in line with the Education Strategy 2017-2022 to ensure an inclusive and accessible environment that provides King’s students with the best opportunity to fully engage with their studies and consequently enjoy the best student experience possible. The project is also aligned with the recently approved Digital Education Policy which recommends that digital content must be inclusive and therefore accessible by design.   

The project aims to:

- Enable accurate and timely delivery of captions/transcripts for lecture content published to students including pre-recorded and live lectures available on-demand;

- Meet accessibility legislation stipulating ‘time-based media’ (pre-recorded digital content) be made available with captions/transcripts;

- Go beyond the minimum automated captioning approach to deliver accurate and quality supplementary material to ensure all students can access their teaching at the point of delivery.

A project team has been engaged to prepare and implement a suitable captioning and transcripts process to meet the legislation and King’s needs. The project will aim to deliver this for three phases.

Semester 1 – for expediency there will be an option to outsource the process to a current provider using the Core Digital Education technology. In tandem, create a service employing students to provide captions/transcripts.

Semester 2 –implement the service employing students whilst assessing the longer term support needs to embed this in business as usual.

Beyond 20/21 – to ensure there is a process that will continue to deliver accurate captions/transcriptions for new and revised content.

Create and implement a standard process to support faculties in the creation of captions/transcripts for lectures.

The project team will:
- Establish Faculty points of contact to work with project team (e.g. FEM, TEL lead, SEM, academic, etc) to understand local processes, priorities, concerns, roles and responsibilities to secure the right engagement and project success

- Understand volume of digital content that needs and has already undergone captioning /transcription

- Work with the accessibility team and student focus group to help define the required baseline

- Define a standardised approach for the requirement and method of creating captions/transcripts

- Work with the faculties to support the production of captions/transcripts using our Core/Recommended

- Digital Learning and Assessment technology, i.e. Kaltura videos.

Implement a service to provide captions/transcripts in a more sustainable way that is ready for Semester 2 and beyond with continued input from Faculty representatives.

The project team will:
- Create and recruit for a service to provide captions and transcripts in a cost effective way whilst taking into account staff workload and the desired level of quality and accessibility

- Provide valuable working experience (and income) for students to work on digital accessibility of educational material

 

A list of Faculty CAT (captioning and transcription) contacts will be published shortly.

For further information about this programme please contact the oversight group through the dla@kcl.ac.uk and add ‘CAT’ to the subject title.

Accessibility at King's

King's has range of resources to ensure your teaching materials are as accessible as possible.

Find out more about digital accessibility on KEATS

Blackboard Ally Course Accessibility Report can help you focus on your content with the biggest accessiblity issues and content that is easiest to fix. 

More about King's Online Accessiblity Resources

The Digital Education Accessibility Task and Finish Group 

The Digital Education Accessibility Task and Finish Group aims to enable inclusive digital education at King’s across all teaching and learning activity by developing policy and guidance to inform best practice.  

Our priorities are:  

  • To establish a Digital Education Accessibility baseline for KEATS and online materials;
  • To identify the enablers and barriers to inclusive digital education in consultation with staff and students;
  • To identify and provide resources, guidance & support to enable best practice;
  • To agree realistic timelines for adoption; 
  • To monitor and evaluate the success  

Current work  

The group has consulted with teaching staff and students to understand the barriers to digital accessibility across our wide range of teaching activities. We will shortly share the findings with relevant groups in order to agree a baseline of digital accessibility at King’s and how this can be collectively achieved.  Resources will also be available on KEATS to support teaching staff in how to ensure teaching materials are accessible to the agreed standard.  

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