You can help improve the quality of automated captions by:
- Speaking clearly and slowly - this helps the system understand your words better
- Using a microphone close to your mouth - this makes your voice clearer and reduces background noise
Avoiding background noise - record in a quiet space when possible
Correcting captions manually
If you are creating a video that will be used by many students over many years, it might be worth spending time to review and fix the captions.
You can check the automated captions and correct any mistakes. For step-by-step instructions, see
Talking to students about caption errors
You should let your students know that automated captions might have some errors in them. Explain that:
- You create many recordings to help them learn
- Because there are so many videos, you can't manually check every caption
- The captions are still useful even with some mistakes
- Students should let you know if they find errors that make it hard to understand
- Being open with students about this helps them understand why errors happen and that you care about making content accessible.
Audio description is when you describe out loud what is happening on screen. This helps students who can't see the visuals, but it actually helps all students understand better.
How to add audio description to your videos
You can build audio description into your videos by describing what you are doing as you record. This is called verbalising.
Examples of verbalising:
When showing a graph:
- Take time to describe the details of the graph before discussing what it means
- Say things like: "This graph shows time on the x-axis and temperature on the y-axis. The line starts low on the left and rises steeply in the middle."
- This gives all students time to look at the graph and understand it before you move on
When demonstrating a process:
- Describe each movement or step as you do it
- Don't just rely on the visuals to show what is happening
Say things like: "Now I'm placing the test tube in the holder" or "I'm clicking on the File menu in the top left corner"
Why this helps all students
When you describe what you're doing:
- Students who can't see the screen can follow along
- All students have time to orient themselves to the content
- Everyone can better understand the relationship between different parts
Taking the time to verbalise what you're doing makes your videos more accessible and improves learning for everyone.
Step by step guide to manually adding audio descriptions to a recording. How to add Audio Description
