Accessibility Requirements

To meet Federal ADA accessibility requirements, website video content must be accessible to individuals with disabilities. This is provided by creating captions for video materials, so that deaf and hard-of-hearing people can make use of them.

Cornell's Video On Demand service will automatically add captions to all uploaded videos using Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). ASR captions have also been retroactively added to videos which did not already have captions and which were uploaded before ASR captions were made automatic.

As a backup to the automatically generated captioning process, users can also manually start the process of generating ASR captions. The instructions below can be used to recreate captions that have been accidentally deleted, or to add captions if your video is otherwise missing them. Once captions have been manually requested, ASR will usually generate them within 10-20 minutes, though the process may require more time for longer videos, or when ASR is handling a heavy load of caption requests.

Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) captions are rated at 70-80% accuracy. This varies depending on the audio quality of the recording, the clarity of the speaker(s), and the amount of technical terminology used.  Given these variables, ASR captions will not, by themselves, meet the accessibility standards that Cornell seeks to achieve.

Order Professional Human Captioning

Some users may want assistance creating or editing captions that meet accessibility requirements or more accurately match the video content. Professional human captioning services deliver captions with an accuracy of 99% and are available for a fee.

Generating Automatic Captions: Recommended Method

1. Log in to Video On Demand.
2. Select My Media.
3. Select the video title or thumbnail.
   
   
    
4. From the video’s page, go to the Actions drop-down menu to the bottom right of the video.
5. Select Order Captions from the drop-down list.
   
   
    
6. Select the Source Media Language for your video.
7. Select Order Captions. The speed of the machine ASR captioning depends primarily on the current load being experienced by the captioning service.  During periods of light load, machine captioning, even for videos of an hour or two, usually requires no more than 10 to 20 minutes to complete.  During periods of high load on the captioning service, it may take several hours for captions to be completed.
   
   
    
8. On the confirmation screen, select OK.
   
   
    
9. Once completed, ASR captions will automatically be added to the video. Refresh the page with the video (after captions have completed) to see the captions. The machine ASR system will also auto-populate the video with AI-generated tags based on the caption content.  Users can edit these tags as normal. Select the Edit button for the video to go to the Edit page to remove tags you don’t want.
   
   

Automatic Captions: Shortcut Method

1. Open your My Media page.
2. Select the Edit button next to the item.
3. Under Tags type captionasr.
4. Select captionasr from the results.
   
   
    
5. Select Save.