Exploring the use of automated captioning and its impact on disabled students in higher education provides a series of recommendations on how to improve auto-captions, informed by a roundtable discussion held by the Disabled Students’ Commission (DSC) to help understand the issues more fully.
Automated captions are used most frequently when lectures and/or seminars are recorded, making them available to review after the session has ended. While captioning presents a way to make learning more accessible to disabled students, quite often these captions are generated by machine learning algorithms and the quality can vary.
The recommendations from the Disabled Students’ Commission (DSC) identify the issues arising from automated captioning and provide solutions or improvements to help achieve a more inclusive and consistent educational experience for disabled students. Suggestions are also offered for higher education providers on how to minimise additional staff workload when working with automated captioning.
Students and staff in universities have overcome many barriers and obstacles over the last two years. This report, which is based on student feedback, demonstrates that we need to do more to help some of our most vulnerable learners. Good captioning makes a real difference and institutions need to read this and build on good practice.”Geoff Layer, Chair of the Disabled Students’ Commission
Advance HE has responsibility for providing secretariat support, as well as overseeing the management, coordination and dissemination of research and other DSC outcomes. Find out more about the Disabled Students’ Commission.