Digital Accessibility

Conformance Standards

1.1 All video content is in Kaltura

Bronze Level

We recommend that all of your Video Content with in Canvas be first uploaded to Katlura. This provides several benefits:

• It creates automated captions for students who may need captioning
• It allows disability services to request professional captioning on that video, should there be a student with a disability in your class, with out you needing to do any additional work

Learn more about Kaltura and how to upload videos.

Once uploaded to Kaltura, we recommend you embed those videos directly into Canvas . Any changes to those videos, such as the addition of professional captions, will automatically be reflected to the videos in Canvas.

1.2 Auto-captions available with ability to turn on/off

Bronze Level

It’s important to note that auto-captions are about 70-80% accurate, and may not meet the needs of students with disabilities. Having automated captions is a minimum for all courses at Rutgers. The best practices however (the Gold Standard) is to have professional captioning, or instructor reviewed and edited captioning on all videos.

If you are utilizing a third-party video, that you are unable to download and utilize Kaltura with, it’s important that you are checking that the video has auto-captions available. The video player should allow the user to turn on and off those captions at minimum. In some platforms like YouTube, you are able to filter your search results by those vidoes with captions.

**If you are utilizing a YouTube video**, Kaltura has an ability to upload that video to Kaltura. It is better to have those items uploaded to Kaltura instead of copying/pasting a YouTube link into your course.

1.3 Instructor created videos have all items described

Silver Level

In many cases, you may be creating content by voicing over powerpoints or using a service like PlayPosit to create recorded lecture material. It’s important to remember that individuals who are blind will not be able to see that content shown on their screen in a video format. Thus its important to vocalize anything your showing, whether that’s images or written text.

Other important considerations:

• Avoid using words like “this” or “that”, that refer to what visually being shown without detail
• When demonstrating how to perform functions, avoid saying things like “click here”. Instead, describe what you are doing, i.e click on the home button, click on the icon that says ‘remove duplicates’, etc
• Avoid referring to things by color, i.e the green bar

1.4 All items should have professional captioning done

Gold Level

If you have a student with a disability in your class, who is approved for captioning, Rutgers Access and Disability Resources (RADR) should have reached out to you. If a student has made themselves known to you, and you have not heard from RADR, have that student reach out to their coordinator to ensure they are submitting all of the appropriate requests.

Its important to note that videos can take up to 2 weeks to caption. Having your videos in Kaltura, along with a list of any third party video sources you might be using, will help RADR submit those items to be captioned.

1.5 Items should have extended audio descriptions available

Gold Level

If you have a student who is blind in your course, videos may require audio descriptions. This can 3-4 weeks, and sometimes longer depending on the length of the video. Having your videos in Kaltura, along with a list of any third party video sources you might be using, will help RADR submit those items to be audio described.