Our textbooks are designed with Oregon students in mind. This means that chapter length and total minutes of media engagement are aligned with weekly course credit hours and anticipated student workloads. Using the Course Workload Estimator from Rice University [Website], we estimate that on average, students will read about 138 words/minute, in addition to engaging in total minutes of multimedia content. Keep in mind that reading speeds vary widely between students, and how fast a student reads is not the same thing as how well a student understands the content. If chapters are 10,000 words or less, and with about 18 minutes total of multimedia is interspersed throughout a chapter at regular intervals, students can expect to take around 90 minutes total for chapter engagement (on average). Also note that when content is new, reading speeds will necessarily be slower than when content is more familiar.

Incorporating media into your textbook ensures that students aren’t bogged down in heavy blocks of endless text. This is a key principle for Universal Design for Learning. Multiple means of representation ensures that students can listen to audio or access video files and images, or analyze graphs and charts in order to engage in course content. Meaningful audio, video, and graphics support attention and focus in ways that text by itself fails to do. However, if audio isn’t accurately captioned, students who are Deaf or hard of hearing won’t be able to access this content. English language learners will miss key information. Students who are studying with sound off while on public transit won’t be able to accurately follow along. Accurate media captions ensure that students have an equitable opportunity to engage.In addition to media captions, an accurate transcript is a key step in tracking information and synthesizing complex ideas.

What are media captions and transcripts?

Media captions provide a running transcription of audio content that is synched up to an audio or video file. As 3PlayMedia notes, machine-generated automatic media captions are often about 80% accurate [Website]. This means that they need manual review and editing by a person in order to provide equitable access. To assess the quality of media captions, watch or listen for a few minutes with captions turned on. Typically names, dates, locations and complex vocabulary words need to be manually edited. If you see typos or misspellings in media captions that don’t align with the audio you hear, it’s likely that they have not been edited for accuracy.

Transcripts provide the full transcription of audio content in a media file. They are often key word searchable and offer an alternative to watching a video in order to receive content. Transcripts are excellent for students who can read more efficiently than they process auditory information. Transcripts are also important for students who want to accurately cite or quote something they learned from engaging with the multimedia.

What to do if captions are missing or inaccurate

Our project team can request that multimedia content creators generate and edit media captions for accuracy. You can initiate a media development request for media captions by emailing Phoebe Daurio at dauriop@linnbenton.edu.

If this request is denied but the media is openly licensed and allows derivatives, we can create accurate captions and transcripts. If the media is all rights reserved and content creators do not grant permission, the revising author will need to find other accessible media as a substitute. You can begin the process of requesting permissions for editing media captions by emailing Phoebe Daurio at dauriop@linnbenton.edu.

What to do if there is no transcript or if it’s inaccurate

YouTube has a new transcript function that allows users to view and download the full transcript of a video. If the transcript is inaccurate, we’ll follow the same steps as above.

For most videos with captions, you can view the full captions transcript, and jump to specific parts of the video:

1. Go to the video description, and click More.
2. Click Show transcript. As you watch the video, the transcript will scroll to show you the current caption text.
3. Click any line of caption text to jump to that part of the video.

To initiate a media development request, email Amy Hofer at hofera@linnbenton.edu