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Providing time-coded captioning is an important part of creating inclusive and accessible content. While providing closed captions on all videos utilized for the purpose of educating our community is required, it is also known that captioning, transcription, and subtitling solutions increases the value of an online video by making it accessible, usable, and searchable.

**Special Note: All videos, even those that have been done professionally, require a manual check for accurate captions before use.

Do It Yourself Captioning

Paid Captioning

Do It Yourself: Captioning Videos

There are many free do it yourself captioning platforms available such as YouTube, DIY Captions, and Amara.

Recommendations:

1. If you own the video or it is a self-created video, YouTube would be the best platform to begin with. Simply upload your video to YouTube and utilize the auto generator provided for captioning. This allows the majority of the work to be automatically completed. Your video will only require you to edit the captions within YouTube for accuracy. Please see our guide for Creating Captions in Youtube. Special Note: Videos created in Screen Cast-O-Matic allow for the creator to add captions to the video to meet ADA and 508 compliance. Follow these steps to add captions, using Screen Cast-O-Matic.^[1]
2. If you have a video owned by others, with captions that require editing, it is recommended to use the DIY Captions platform. Please see Editing Captions in DIY Captioning, for information on how to use this platform.
3. If you found a video without captions (which is owned by another party), Amara would be the recommended platform to add captions. This platform will require additional time, as you will be creating captions from scratch, most likely requiring additional edits before your video is completed. Please see the Guide for Adding Captions with Amara.

Paid Captioning

Staff and Faculty at the University of Mary Washington can choose between three different vendors for captioning and transcription services using the information listed below or any other vendor of their choosing. Virginia institutions of higher education have the opportunity to use the contracts below which have been negotiated by George Mason University. Please be sure to use the correct contract information when communicating with the vendor.

The use of these services allows for the purchase of SRT files (caption text files). Caption Encoding is needed in order to merge caption text files with video files. This allows for the end product to be a captioned video and ready for use. This service can be provided for an additional fee by 3PlayMedia. Should you decide not to pay the additional fee for the fully captioned video (MP4 file) or utilize vendors that do not provide this service, there will be additional steps.

• Guide for saving SRT (caption) with video file
• Merging SRT files with video files utilizing Handbrake

Departments are responsible for the cost of having their videos captioned unless ODR is aware of a student who is deaf or hard of hearing, at which time, the Assistive Technology Coordinator will notify faculty via email, and ODR will assist with the cost of captioning for all material scheduled to be used within the course for the duration of the semester.

Captioning Vendors

3Play Media, Inc.

• Address: 77 N Washington St, Floor 2 Boston, MA  02114
• Website: https://www.3playmedia.com/virginia/
• Contract Number: GMU-1475-18-01
• Contact: Natalie Tarski (natalie@3playmedia.com)^[2]

** 3Play Media offers Caption Encoding for $10/file.

Cielo24, Inc.

**Requires account minimum purchase

• Address: PO Box 91130, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
• Website: https://cielo24.com/partners/VASCUPP/
• Contract Number: GMU-1475-18-02
• Contact: Joseph DeRocco (joseph.derocco@cielo24.com)^[3]

Verbit, Inc.

• Address: 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto, CA 94303
• Website: https://verbit.ai/
• Contract Number: GMU-1475-18-03
• Contact: Aaron Singer (aaron@verbit.ai)^[4]

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