Public and private educational institutions must provide equal access for students with disabilities in agreement with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as detailed in Title II (publicly-funded universities & vocational schools) and Title III (privately-funded). Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 also ensures equal accessibility in any system of higher education that receives federal funding.
Beyond ensuring equal accessibility to all students, closed captioning is used as an effective learning tool by a significant percentage of students that do not self-identify as having difficulty with hearing. The availability of lecture and video transcripts helps students review and retain information outside of the classroom. It also aids students with learning disabilities, as well as ESL students.
Furthermore, the educational value and benefits of closed captioning are often overlooked when it’s perceived as economically burdensome. Captioning is not only for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Recognizing the value of captioning as a successful tool for all students should motivate all administrators to provide captioning on all their online courses.
Often, universities do not take the proper initiative in allocating suitable funding or appropriately equipping the classrooms until the school is approached by an organization advocating for accessibility rights – at which time, the need to comply becomes a time-crunched burden with a possible lawsuit attached.
Universities should not be overwhelmed with the thought of having to equip the classrooms with an array of expensive technologies. The closed captioning process is simple. As long as clear audio can be transferred via the internet or a phone line, real-time captioners can write remotely to a variety of web platforms across multiple devices already available to students – devices such as mobile phones or laptops.
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We know that our captioning can only be as good as those who create them. That's why we have spent years growing a team of highly trained, experienced captioners with the largest known dictionaries in the industry, always choosing the best captioner for your particular program genre. Although we guarantee our captioners to write 200 words a minute with 98% accuracy or higher, our captioners can type from around 250 to 300+ words per minute. You'll find our live writers to always be on time, reliable, and never missing a millisecond of your programming.
