Video Resources

UCF's Digital Accessibility mandates that all video creators (or maintainers) are responsible for ensuring that their videos meet specific accessibility standards. In particular, the policy states that:

The party responsible for creating and/or maintaining all multimedia resources posted to university web pages and applications, as well as multimedia used in university programs, courses, and activities, shall strive to conform to WCAG 2.0 AA by June 26, 2023.

Guideline 1.2 of WCAG 2.0 applies directly to videos. The two main considerations for AA compliance are captions and audio descriptions. There are different requirements for each of these depending on whether you have a live or prerecorded video.

Captions are lines of text that transcribe any audio information in a video, including voice-overs, dialogue, sound effects, and background music. They are designed to help those with auditory impairments understand audio information. There are two types of captions: closed captions and open captions. Closed captions can be shown or hidden and are usually displayed in the lower-third of a screen. Open captions cannot be turned off; they are part of the video. Open captions are often used for videos posted to social media.

While there is no single standard for captioning, there are some recommended practices. The Described and Captioned Media Program's Captioning Key identifies 5 elements of quality captioning:

1. accurate
2. consistent
3. clear
4. readable
5. equal.

Recommendations for captions include to

• Have no more than two lines per caption

• Each line of text should be a maximum of 42 characters in length 

• Display each caption between 1-6 seconds

• Describe any sounds that are necessary or enhance understanding of the content. Non-speech sounds like [MUSIC] or [LAUGHTER] should be added in square brackets. 

• Follow accurate spelling. 

• Identify the speaker when multiple speakers are present, and it is unclear from the video who’s speaking. 

• Use upper and lowercase letters when appropriate. 

• Use punctuation to provide maximum clarity in the text.

Audio descriptions are added to a video as a voice-over narrator. They are intended to describe important visual details that can't be understood by the soundtrack alone. 

There are two types of audio descriptions: standard and extended. Standard audio description is interspersed between the natural pauses in the soundtrack, and it does not require extensive editing to add to your video. Extended audio description is not limited to the natural pauses; the source video is paused to create room for descriptions when necessary; it does require extensive editing to add to your video.

Not all videos require audio description. If you are creating a screencast demonstrating how to use a resource, you can avoid the need to add audio description by narrating the actions you are taking during the video, such as saying "click on the search box in the top right corner..."

There are a few different options available for creating captions. Captions are automatically generated for any video uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo, but those captions will have to be edited to meet our accessibility guidelines. You can edit those captions in YouTube, Vimeo, or the free subtitling platform, Amara.

You can also use Adobe Premiere Pro to create both open and closed captions for your video. All our videos posted on Vimeo have closed captions. Closed captions are exported as a separate file (in either VTT or SRT format) and then uploaded along with your video to Vimeo. 

The first video included below demonstrates how to use Adobe Premiere Pro to transcribe and then create open or closed captions for your video. The second video demonstrates how to use the subtitling platform, Amara, to create closed captions for your video. Amara does not automatically provide a transcript for your video, like YouTube, Vimeo, or Adobe Premiere Pro, but it can be used to edit existing captions.