Work > Writing > Instructional Content Sample

[NOTE: This is a technical writing sample created by Jeffery Oliver as an employee of the College of Arts and Sciences at Boise State. As such, links to resources have been intentionally removed.]

Video content, captions and transcripts

This email is designed to provide approaches for maintaining video content and easily generating captions and transcripts for videos.

  • SEND DATE: Friday, April 21, 2023

  • TO: Department Chairs, Admins and Web Admins

  • FROM: jefferyoliver@boisestate.edu

  • SUBJECT: Web Accessibility Initiative - Video content, captions and transcripts

Email Body

Chairs and Web Admins,

Today in our series on creating and maintaining accessible content let’s talk video and audio content (also called time-based media). I’m going to use “video” to mean video or audio content throughout this document for simplicity. Also, as this is particular to our current web accessibility initiative, I’m only referring to videos on our websites (though this applies to video on social channels too).

If you need details on technical details described in this email, you can find information on the OIT website or contact the Help Desk at (208) 426-4357. If you want to understand the processes described, send me an email and we’ll figure it out together.

Do we keep it?

There is no question that video content can be very compelling as a way to demonstrate culture through marketing videos, show a process, and to tell stories via podcasts. If you have several (or a lot) of videos to make accessible, consider removing some of them. Or, like with documents, move these to a Google Drive folder and link to the folder from your website.

Do we keep “this” video?

  • Is the video content current or a record of a very recent event? If it’s a record of an event, technically, you could link to it on YouTube or Panopto rather than embed it on your website.

  • If the content is evergreen, is it still relevant to what your department is doing now/today? Something cool three years ago may not be as cool or compelling today.

  • Does the video help with the idea that our websites should primarily serve to attract and retain students and demonstrate our work publicly?

We definitely need it and it’s not accessible

Captions allow people with different abilities to experience content in real time. For others, a transcript provides a full-accessible way to experience the content.

Did you know?

  • What’s the fastest way to help someone find a particular section in a video or podcast? Having a transcript or table of contents that includes links to a particular time in the video.

  • Did you know that over 80% of video content presented on social channels is consumed without audio!?

  • How do search engines index video and audio content? Captions and transcripts.

School of the Environment example

Here’s an example of a marketing/introductory video we created for the School of the Environment. The video is captioned and transcribed and appears in two places on the website: the homepage and its own page with a transcript.

  • Captioned video at the bottom of the SOE homepage

  • Separate page that includes the captioned video and the transcript

Here are some things to note about this transcript:

  • Where the video appears on the website homepage includes text letting people know that, “Closed captions are available and you can access a descriptive transcript at Video Transcript – The School of Environment at Boise State.”

  • “Video Transcript section” is called out so that people using screen readers can jump to the section of the page since it’s styled semantically as “Heading 2 (H2).”

  • The transcript identifies speakers along with their title which appears on screen.

  • When a person begins speaking, we see their full name in all caps the first time they speak and subsequent times the first name in all caps is used.

  • Video sections that are titles in the video are displayed semantically on the page. In this case as “Heading 3 (H3)” styles.

How to generate a transcript and closed captions

I’ve been creating video content at Boise State for over ten years and this is the easiest and fastest process I know to create accurate transcripts and captions. NOTE: the auto-caption feature in YouTube does not create accurate captions so this is not a way to provide access to the content.

These instructions assume that the video will be streamed via YouTube either directly or as an embed on our website. This is an overview of the process I use to create transcripts and captions.

  • Complete the edit of the video. Captions are text files with time markers so it’s important that the video edit is completely complete.

  • Upload the video to our Boise State Panopto service. Panopto processes the video and then I download captions from Panopto to edit these. I prefer Panopto over YouTube for speech-to-text caption generation because, well, it’s more accurate and adds punctuation so I have less editing to do.

  • Using the text file downloaded from Panopto, I create the transcript first. I delete out the time markers and make sure that proper nouns are capitalized, that university or higher ed words translated properly, and check punctuation. Each time a new person begins speaking, I add their name like you see on the SOE transcript example. I then copy/paste the transcript into a new page on the website where the video appears and finish out the page similar to the SOE example.

  • For the captions, I use that same document and add “>>” before each speaker and use brackets for sounds “[upbeat music plays].” Webguide has details on captions.

  • Then I upload the video to YouTube and once it’s processed, I upload the caption file without timings.

  • In the video description on YouTube, I make sure to provide a link to the video transcript page.

I want someone else to do it for me

While this process only takes 30-ish minutes for videos under five minutes, it’s time consuming for long videos. It may make sense to work with a company like Rev transcription service. Be sure to get captions and transcripts.

Does this make sense?

These are literally the steps I’m taking, one or two hours at a time each week, to make sure the content on the college website is up to date and accessible. I hope these examples make sense too for your audiences. If not, please let me know.

I will be reaching out to chairs and web admins starting next week to talk through these and other ideas with you so we can hopefully find economical ways to improve our websites.

Thanks so much for your time,

Jeff O.

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Web accessibility initiative resources

Here are some resources about this current initiative as well as practical steps for remediating common accessibility issues.

  • Federal Voluntary Resolution Agreement Regarding Digital Accessibility - This notice was posted to the Web Guide website and sent to web administrators on Nov. 30, 2022.

  • Web Content Accessibility Checklists on the Boise State Web Guide - These checklists are great for quick reference on how to best develop content on our sites considering structure, text, images, tables, graphs, links, video, audio, PDFs and more.

  • Our Responsibilities as Website Owners at Boise State - This page describes our various roles toward maintaining websites that provide the best experience for all people.

  • Review Published PDFs in Monsido at Boise State - This document describes how to use our web accessibility tool Monsido to find PDFs.

  • Accessible Infographics via Boise State Web Guide - This page describes the best ways to make content in infographics accessible to everyone.