How to produce accessible videos:

• Make sure videos have quality audio, displayed time lengths, accurate closed captions & downloadable text transcripts. If the audio quality is low, captioning services may find it difficult to accurately transcribe the video.
• Obtain closed captions from services like Otter.ai, from YouTube Studio, or from Zoom. Edit the captions text file for accuracy, fixing typos. Here is a blog post about Using YouTube Studio to obtain captions for your video.
• Create text transcripts from the captions and include audio descriptions of visuals used in the presentation. If you used Zoom, you may already have been provided with a separate transcript file. The main difference is that captions include timings and are more machine readable than transcripts. Text transcripts are more human readable and usually don’t include timings. See how to download captions from YouTube that can be converted into transcripts in this blog article about YouTube captions. If downloading captions from YouTube to convert to transcripts, be sure to choose the ‘remove timestamps’ option.

Benefits of including closed captions and text transcripts:

• Providing good audio quality and accurate captions not only improves user experience for everyone but can be especially important for individuals with total or partial hearing loss.
• Providing accurate video transcripts allows screen readers to access information that deaf-blind participants cannot access through audio or video alone.
• Providing multiple ways to access content supports different learning styles and removes barriers to access. For example, just posting a video without captions would leave out people with hearing disabilities. But by adding closed captions and transcripts, we can lift that barrier to access making the video content available to a wider audience.

Uploading captions to video hosting services:

• Most video hosting services accept captions in .srt format. Be sure to export to that format from your captioning service. Captions are different from text transcriptions in that they contain machine readable timings. A video hosting service uses those timings to sync with video playback.
• If using MediaSite, choose: ‘Manually upload a captions file’ under Audio Transcriptions under the Delivery sub-tab. Then choose your captions file to upload. Then choose the language of the captions file (usually English). See the Captioning your Presentation article for more information about MediaSite captioning options. Below is a screen of adding a captions file to a video in MediaSite.
  
• If using YouTube, you can use YouTube Studio to auto-generate captions (see this blog post for more info). Or you can upload a captions file that you obtained another service, like Otter.ai.
  In YouTube Studio, From the left menu, select Subtitles. Then choose the video you want to edit. Click ADD LANGUAGE and select your language. Then under "Subtitles", click ADD to upload a captions file. Find out more in this YouTube help article about captioning or in this blog post.
  Automated YouTube captions are a good starting point, but should be edited for automated language issues. The captions can be downloaded and annotated for use as a transcript. See the CFAES Webinar Accessibility article for more information. YouTube Studio provides the capability to edit your captions in-app and so do other services like Otter.ai. Below is a screen of finding auto generated captions in YouTube Studio.