Mt. San Antonio College
FAQ on Captioning of College Owned Multimedia Materials

1.	Does all the multimedia I show in the classroom and/or post online for my students have to be captioned?
Yes. All multimedia materials must be captioned. If you do not have a deaf/hard-of-hearing student in your class, captions may be on or off at the discretion of the instructor.
Some Subtleties
•	There is no need to caption if the material is student work or other raw footage that will not be archived or shared among other students. 
•	There is no need to caption longer works if you are just pulling clips from them. Compile the clips into a montage and have the montage captioned. 
•	If the video already has foreign language subtitles, do not caption unless requested to do so as an accommodation. 
2.	Under what circumstances can I show uncaptioned multimedia resources to my class which includes a student who is deaf/hard-of-hearing?
None. 

3.	Can I show multimedia materials without captions if I have an interpreter or live captioner in my class?
No. Neither of these accommodations satisfies the legal requirement for open/closed captions.

4.	What happens if we do not provide deaf/hard-of-hearing students timely access to captioned multimedia?
Students with disabilities who believe they have not been provided the appropriate accommodations to which they are legally entitled may sue Mt. SAC and/or the faculty/staff members involved. Students can also file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. If the Office of Civil Rights comes to Mt. SAC to investigate a complaint, every aspect of accessibility will be scrutinized in addition to the complaint. 

5.	What about audio-only files like podcasts?
The same principles apply to creating transcripts for audio files as for creating captioning multimedia like videos and DVDs.

6.	Is a transcript an adequate accommodation for multimedia like videos and DVDs?
No. The appropriate access strategy for multimedia is synchronous captions. 
7.	Do I have to create my own transcripts?
No, but if you can create or obtain transcripts, the captioning process is significantly expedited. Most of the time-consuming work lies in generating the transcripts. 

8.	Do I have to create my own captioning?
Adding captions to your multimedia instructional materials is Mt. SAC’s legal responsibility. Faculty are not expected to caption the multimedia shown in their classrooms unless the materials are owned by that faculty member. If you want support in creating your own captions for any type of multimedia, contact DSP&S, x4290.

9.	What is the very first step in the captioning process?
Check to see if the content is already captioned. Getting the captions to show can sometimes be challenging. Feel free to contact Technical Services (x4799) if you are not sure whether the captions exist.
10.	How do I request transcripts and/or captions for my multimedia?
If you need captions created for your multimedia materials contact Technical Services (x4799).
To help ensure deaf/hard of hearing students receive appropriate accommodations, DSP&S will notify professors approximately three weeks before the start of each semester if there is a deaf/hard of hearing student enrolled in one of their courses. Such notification is not a perfect process as these students, just like any other students, can add courses. Additionally, these students who add distance education courses may not inform DSP&S as they will not need to arrange for interpreters or real-time captioning as they would for on-campus courses. Please keep in mind that such ad hoc captioning to accommodate individual students cannot legally be Mt. SAC’s approach. Our legal mandate is to purchase/create captioned multimedia so every deaf/hard of hearing student has timely, equal access to our multimedia resources.

Waiting until a deaf/hard-of-hearing student enrolls in your class to caption is risky as captioning is a time-consuming task. If faculty have a deaf/hard-of-hearing student in their classes and their multimedia is NOT captioned, the multimedia cannot be shown at all.
11.	Do publishers have to caption their multimedia resources?
Indeed they do. Given the federal mandate for captioned instructional materials, multimedia publisher content should be captioned. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. It is critical that you enquire about captioned multimedia before adopting publisher content. If there is no captioned multimedia publisher resources that meet your needs, please notify Technical Services (x4799), immediately, so the resources can be captioned ASAP.
Below are questions to inform the captioning conversation with publishers.
•	Are the videos captioned?
•	What is the format of the videos? (examples of acceptable formats: (.wmv, .mov, .rm, 
.mp4, .avi, .flv)?
•	Contact Christine Miller at ext. 3765 or Tom Peters at ext. 8706 if you have any questions on video formatting.
•	Does the content include audio files? If yes, are there transcripts available?
•	Why would I use your content if I can find accessible content from another publisher?
Special Note: When talking with publishers, please also include the questions below to expand the discussion beyond captioning.
•	Are the resources compliant with Section 508 guidelines? How was this validated? Was it tested by people using assistive technologies like screen readers for the blind?
•	Is there a text equivalent for all visual content?
•	Can someone navigate and respond solely through the keyboard?
12.	When should I request that transcripts and/or captions be created?

Please request that your multimedia be captioned as soon as you choose to include multimedia for a course. Creating captions and transcripts is a pain-staking, time-consuming process. Making your captioning and transcription needs known as soon as possible will eliminate last-minute scrambling to provide accommodations. If faculty have a deaf/hard-of-hearing student in their classes and their multimedia is NOT captioned, the multimedia cannot be shown.

13.	How does the California Community Colleges Distance Education Captioning and Transcription Grant help us?
Through this grant, we request transcripts and captioning for the following purposes:
•	distance education courses
•	hybrid classes (some instructional hours offered at a distance);
•	on-campus classes utilizing distance methods of content delivery as they evolve (e.g., class capture, web conferencing, vodcasting, podcasting, content posted within a Learning Management System); and
•	digital learning object repositories used to collect and make available digitized content; this content could be used by on-campus, hybrid, online, and other delivery methods.
You are strongly encouraged to submit your multimedia while Distance Education Captioning and Transcription Grant funding is still available.

14.	Do I need to obtain copyright permission before requesting a video/DVD is captioned?
Yes. The copyright request template can be found on the Mt. SAC Captioning and Accessibility Resources web page. If you do not receive a response within ten days, we can proceed with captioning.

15.	How do I obtain copyright permission for a YouTube video and other Internet multimedia resources?
E-mail the owner of the resources and request permission to caption. If you do not receive a response within ten days, we can proceed with captioning.

Sample letter:
Greeting,
 
I am a professor at Mt. San Antonio College writing to request permission to caption your video, name of video, to use in my name of class. I am making this request because faculty have a legal obligation to use multimedia resources that are accessible to all students, including those who are deaf/hard-of-hearing. If you are not the owner of the rights to use this video please let me know who the owner is. Ideally, I would like to download the video, caption it, and then upload it to my class’ YouTube account so my students will always have access to the captioned video. Thanks so much for your time and consideration. 

Name
Department
College

16.	What equipment/features do I need to show subtitled/captioned multimedia in the classroom? 

Video Tapes
1.	You can use a TV/VHS player cart along with its remote control to adjust the captioning settings.
2.	You can use the VHS player connected to our smart classroom projectors. This option requires that the projector has a decoder. The newest generation of projectors has decoders. The older generation does not. Please contact Technical Services (x4799), to find out whether the projector in your classroom has a built-in decoder. If it does not they will help you with the installation of a portable decoder. DVDs
1.	Play the DVD through a computer using the mouse to adjust the settings. 
2.	Classroom DVD Player
o	A decoder must be present to show captions through our classrooms’ DVD players. Just as with the VHS player option above, please contact Technical Services (x4799), to find out whether the projector in your classroom has a built-in decoder. If it does not, they will help you with the installation of a portable decoder. 
o	Subtitles are available without needing a decoder. 

There are many variables in making closed captions appear properly when playing DVDs. We strongly encourage you to try playing the captioned DVD in your classroom well before you plan to show it to your class. If you have any problems, contact Technical Services (x4799).