Article courtesy of
ASAP Sports, CoSIDA's Official Instant Transcript Provider. ASAP provides
numerous
Webscripts (real-time transcripts) and
Fastscripts (full transcripts) throughout the year for sessions from CoSIDA's continuing education series for membership real-time and on-demand use.
Courtesy of ASAP Sports
At the recent CoSIDA Convention last month, ASAP Sports addressed the attendees and spoke on the fact that the University of Wisconsin (Madison), led by
Director of Website Services Tam Flarup and Director of Athletic Communications Brian Lucas, have decided to provide captions for the video stream of weekly and postgame press conferences.
It seemed appropriate near the 40th anniversary of Title IX for Wisconsin decided to take a step towards adopting the guidelines set by the Americans with Disability Act (ADA). Just as Title IX was and is about inclusion and participation, so too is the ADA. Adding captioning to video steams aims to include those who are hearing impaired in the sports discussion.
President Nixon signed the Title IX amendments to the Higher Education Act on June 23, 1972, and its 37 words - "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance" - helped spark a revolution in amateur sports. Recently, former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, its key sponsor, said, "None of us recognized the impact this would have on sports. Athletics get the headlines, but we were thinking about brainpower and knowledge."
Just as forty years ago the supporters of Title IX could not know the breath of impact it would have on individuals, institutions and sports; so too the benefits of ADA requirements have not always been immediately seen. When cities started creating ramps in sidewalks and public buildings for wheelchair access who realized that everything on wheels would benefit? Strollers, delivery carts, bicycles, hand trucks are commonly seen using ramps to easily move around the city.
The Wisconsin effort to stay ahead of requirements in meeting ADA guidelines also means there will be added advantages and opportunities.
Though the ADA guidelines are not requirements yet, there are more benefits with captions than meets the eye.
First, a transcript is provided after the events which can be distributed to various media outlets. Also this transcript can be used to optimize video on demand services including while providing increased search engine optimization (SEO) for the entire website. The article "
Video SEO – Optimizing your videos for increased YouTube views "by Joe Tertel outlines the many uses of captions and corresponding transcripts.
Captions are essential to viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing and also benefit those learning English as a second language. Captions are a great tool for improving the reading and listening skills of others. Other benefits of captioning include making your videos accessible to people who would otherwise have tuned out or would be unable to understand the content of the videos, creating a better viewing experience, better retention of material, higher user satisfaction, search engine optimization, and making video material available to those without sound-capabilities.
Transcripts provide a textual version of the content that can be accessed by anyone, and also allow the content of your multimedia to be more easily indexed and searchable.
ASAP Sports has provided captioning for a number of live press conferences events like the Rose and Sugar Bowls, and most recently, the NCAA College World Series (Division I baseball) where media coordinator J.D. Hamilton has used streaming captions as a way to help media meet tight deadlines.
In addition, more and more scoreboards using in stadium captions are being used to provide announcer information to those attending the event live.
If you want more on the caption services offer by CoSIDA corporate sponsor ASAP Sports please give us call at 212.385.0297 or via email
HERE.
Below is more information about the reasoning behind Wisconsin’s decision to provide captioning is below along with a brief overview of the ADA guidelines.
ACCESSIBILITY DEFINITIONS
The University of Wisconsin athletics department has adopted an Accessibility policy that endorses compliance with the Federal Rehabilitation Act, Section 508. Designing under the Accessibility Standards enables as many people as possible to be able to access your site.
Wisconsin is a member of the W3C
(http://www.w3.org), the body that tries to guide institutions to compliance with
Section 508. The school also helped write some of the organization’s regulations.
The W3C (or World Wide Web Consortium) created
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 which cover a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible.
Web accessibility is the practice of making websites and web applications inclusive and usable by people with all levels of abilities and disabilities. Web accessibility covers all types of disability, including those that you may be more familiar with and those that you may not, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities and elderly users.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Transcription and Captioning Requirements
The UW Madison Policy Governing World Wide Web Accessibility endorses compliance with the Federal Rehabilitation Act’s Section 508 standards, specifically subsections 1194.1 through 1194.22 and 1194.31. Media (audio and video) addresses captioning and transcripts:
(a) A text equivalent for every non-text element shall be provided (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content).
(b) Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation.
More information about the technical aspect of live captions are here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/media-equiv-real-time-captions.html
http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20120103/G9
The web accessibility guidelines require that captions be synchronized, equivalent to that of the spoken word, and accessible and available to those who need it.
For web video, captions can be open, closed, or both. Closed captions are a technique of displaying synchronized captioned text only when the user desires it. Open captions include the same text as closed captions, but the captions are a permanent part of the picture, and cannot typically be turned off.
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