Media, like videos, images, and podcasts, are a great way to diversify the content students learn from in your course beyond traditional textbooks and readings. However, we want to ensure that users who may have visual or auditory disabilities can access this media.
Choose already-accessible (and free!) options
- Explore what’s available through GW Libraries that will be free for your students. GW has access to two large media collections from Swank and Kanopy.
- Work with GW Course Reserves librarians to request media for your course if you do not see it in our existing media collections.
- Search for videos on sites like YouTube and filter out results to only show those with captions available. Here are instructions on how to filter searches for captions on YouTube.
- Many government documents and image resources are required to have accessibility features by federal law. There are a number of free places to find media that could be of interest to your course, including:
Make concise, clear videos of your own
Creating your own introductory, lecture, or concept videos is easier than ever with tools like Echo360, Adobe Express Premium (available to all GW community members), and YouTube (available with a personal Google account). You can make an accessible and usable video by taking some time to plan and record a concise, clear video.
- Think of the purpose of your video: are you introducing yourself to the class? Are you going over an assignment? Talking about a concept that can be difficult for students to grasp? Starting with the objective of your video can help you narrow the focus and be as direct as possible.
- Outline content (and even script!): take the time to outline what you’re going to cover. If you feel comfortable, it can be very helpful to script it out. You can even use a tool like Word’s Dictation Tool or Google’s Type with your voice feature to capture your spoken words more naturalistically.
- Record with clear audio and video: record a quick 1-minute test video and watch it back. Is the audio loud enough? Is the video picture clear? If you need or are interested in recording equipment or an actual studio, visit CREATE Digital Studio in Gelman Library for support.
- Keep the video short: Research, such as this article on effective educational video from the National Library of Medicine shows that attention begins to dip after 6–9 minutes of video. If you’re planning to capture what would be a longer lecture in a live classroom setting, break it up into smaller segments.
Include captions on your recorded videos
If you create your own videos for your course, there are many options available to support you in creating accurate captions.
- Recordings in Echo360—both live in-classroom and pre-recorded on your own—will be automatically captioned. Review Echo360 user guides from the Instructional Technology Lab (ITL) on using Echo360.
- Recording on Zoom is easy to do, and you can enable automated Zoom captions and automated Zoom transcripts, both of which you can edit to be more accurate as needed.
- Recording on WebEx also provides automatic Webex captioning and automatic Webex transcripts, both of which you can edit to be more accurate as needed.
- If you prefer to host your videos on YouTube, you can also add automatic captions and transcripts to YouTube videos.
Include transcripts for audio
For audio-only media, such as podcasts, choose podcasts that have a text transcript as well. Transcripts provide access to people with auditory disabilities, and also to people who prefer to take in information via text for a variety of reasons.
Write alternative text for images, charts, and graphs
Alternative text or “alt text” is a visually hidden textual description of an image. It ensures that all users can access visual content. An alt text caption should be concise and communicate all necessary context in the image, the purpose of the image, and any feeling that it’s communicating.
- Instructions for adding alternative text in Microsoft documents
- Instructions for adding alternative text in Google documents
When writing alt text, consider:
- What’s the point of this image? Why have I included it in my document? What is it communicating to your reader?
- How can I concisely describe what’s relevant in this image to a user who couldn’t access it?
- What is not relevant to explain? What can I leave out?
From Harvard University, this is a great, thorough guide on writing good alt text and specific guidance on writing descriptions for charts and graphs.
Additional accessibility guides
Below are more guides for creating accessible materials:
