The Digital Accessibility Guidelines mean that the content we hold on webpages, in Moodle, Panopto and Teams, as well as information we distribute digitally must be fully accessible. One item specifically relates to captioning and transcription services: “All videos and live streams must now be fully captioned and audio-described (not just subtitled)”. We have reviewed this requirement and have assigned additional resources and support for captioning.
Automatic Transcription by Default
Automatic transcription has been activated by default in Panopto. Automatic captions will be created for Microsoft Stream videos once your language is set to "US English" (UK English is not currently an option).
Please note you will need to set your language in Microsoft Stream to “US English”, it is not set by default.
Approximate accuracy for MS Stream (80%) and Panopto (70-75%) are considered appropriate for teaching purposes, although this relies on good audio quality and results are variable depending on the speaker’s accent and the recording equipment used. We have previously provided recommendations for good quality headsets to enhance the quality of your audio recordings.
The process for human transcription from AI Media for disabled students remains unchanged and teaching staff should continue to request this via Panopto – please contact the Student Wellbeing Service on wellbeing@gre.ac.uk if you have any queries.
Checking and correcting transcriptions
Academic staff are not expected to check or correct automatic transcriptions for their teaching material. We are implementing a process for students to request improved captioning for a recording, and student staff will be employed within faculties to review these requests and update transcripts as required. We aim to reduce the burden on academic staff while providing accurate transcripts and employability benefit to our students. Further details will be shared once available.
Guidance on how to edit captions in Panopto and Microsoft Stream are available.
Local operation, central support
Guidance and training for reviewing and updating transcriptions are being developed by colleagues in Student and Academic Services (SAS), Greenwich Learning and Teaching (GLT) and Information and Library Services (ILS). They will advise on technical terminology, grammar and the appearance of formulas for maths & science courses. We will share further information on Internal News.
You can find further information on creating inclusive content to help you design inclusive, accessible content, on our webpages.
