Getting Captioning
Started on Campus:
Lessons Learned
Dean Brusnighan
Assistive Technology Specialist
Purdue University
All right the first thing I will do is to check to see that everybody
can hear me OK, alright. My name is Dean Brusnighan and I am
from Purdue University. My title is assistive technology
Getting Captioning
Started on Campus:
Lessons Learned
Dean Brusnighan
Assistive Technology Specialist
Purdue University
specialist. And I am very pleased to have you here today.
Thanks for coming, The title of my session is Getting Captioning
Started on Campus: Lessons. I am pretty informal show any
Getting Captioning
Started on Campus:
Lessons Learned
Dean Brusnighan
Assistive Technology Specialist
Purdue University
you have a question please feel free to interrupt me. I hope
that we will have a good dialogue going. And I hope that I will
be able to provide some information that will be useful to you.
Getting Captioning
Started on Campus:
Lessons Learned
Dean Brusnighan
Assistive Technology Specialist
Purdue University
How many of you are here because you do not have captioning
going on your campus right now? Wow about half or more.
Okay. That is where Purdue was about a year and a a half ago. I
Getting Captioning
Started on Campus:
Lessons Learned
Dean Brusnighan
Assistive Technology Specialist
Purdue University
have only been in my position three years. About a year and ½
ago I started asking questions and trying to get answers about
what captioning was going on on campus. There was none.
Background
• A one-year, campus-wide, proof-of-concept
project
• Provide captioning in broad categories:
• Administrative video
• Academic video
• Intercollegiate Athletics
So, hopefully I can provide some information that is helpful to
you. Some background, I received funding through the vice
president of information technology at Purdue for a one year
Background
• A one-year, campus-wide, proof-of-concept
project
• Provide captioning in broad categories:
• Administrative video
• Academic video
• Intercollegiate Athletics
campus wide proof of concept project. And what that means to
me is I was going to try to do captioning in a bunch of different
areas on campus and see if any of it worked and if it did work try
Background
• A one-year, campus-wide, proof-of-concept
project
• Provide captioning in broad categories:
• Administrative video
• Academic video
• Intercollegiate Athletics
to help someone else understand this is how to do it and help
them, take over. And the idea was to provide captioning in
three broad categories.
Background
• A one-year, campus-wide, proof-of-concept
project
• Provide captioning in broad categories:
• Administrative video
• Academic video
• Intercollegiate Athletics
1) Administrative video.
2) Academic video.
3) Intercollegiate athletics.
Agenda
• YouTube
• Commencement Ceremonies
• Echo 360
• Intercollegiate Athletics
• What I learned
So the agenda items for today we will talk about youtube, we
will talk about commencement ceremonies, those are both
under the administrative category. We will talk about echo 360,
Agenda
• YouTube
• Commencement Ceremonies
• Echo 360
• Intercollegiate Athletics
• What I learned
which is the academic portion. And we will talk about
intercollegiate athletics. And all along the way I will be sharing
with you lessons I have learned along the way.
Administrative Video
The first thing we will talk about is YouTube. At the time this
project started Purdue had it on its Purdue channel, about 200,
a little more than 200, YouTube videos on the Purdue channel.
Administrative Video
And so part of our captioning funding was to take all of ? those
and work through the backlog and provide captions for all of
those. So we felt like this is a pretty public face? of Purdue, let
Administrative Video
us make sure it is accessible. As we were working through those
with a student employee, we found out that YouTube was
offering this machine transcription for free so we decided, well
Administrative Video
ok, let’s set up a test to compare fixing that machine
transcription that is free against paying a captioning vendor to
do it for us and see what the difference in cost would be.
YouTube
• Set up a test to compare costs:
• fixing machine transcription
vs.
• paying a captioning vendor (Automatic Sync
Technologies)
Our captioning vendor at Purdue is Automatic Sync
Technologies, we have been working with them from the
beginning and that was the result of a student doing some
YouTube
• Set up a test to compare costs:
• fixing machine transcription
vs.
• paying a captioning vendor (Automatic Sync
Technologies)
research and looking at different captioning vendors. I would be
happy to talk to you about that after the session. That was not
the focus of today. So we wanted to test these two things. And
YouTube
• Set up a test to compare costs:
• fixing machine transcription
vs.
• paying a captioning vendor (Automatic Sync
Technologies)
we chose 16 different videos from the Purdue channel with a
variety of lengths from 2 minutes to 8 or ten minutes I think was
the longest one. And we chose them according to different
YouTube
• Set up a test to compare costs:
• fixing machine transcription
vs.
• paying a captioning vendor (Automatic Sync
Technologies)
criteria. Some of them had a lot of background noise and some
of them were created in a studio so they did not have
background noise. Uh, yes, let’s close the door. So we tried to
YouTube
• Set up a test to compare costs:
• fixing machine transcription
vs.
• paying a captioning vendor (Automatic Sync
Technologies)
offer a variety of different kinds of videos to the machine
transcription and to the vendor to see what the differences
would be.
Compare processes
Machine Transcription
• Download MT file from
YouTube
• Fix word recognition and
timing errors
• Upload to YouTube
AST captioning vendor
• Quickly review video to
identify problematic words
or names
• Submit video to AST
• Review returned caption file
to fix errors, if any
• Upload to YouTube
So let’s compare the processes first so you know exactly what
we did. And again this is with a student employee who
downloaded the machine transcription file from YouTube, fixed
Compare processes
Machine Transcription
• Download MT file from
YouTube
• Fix word recognition and
timing errors
• Upload to YouTube
AST captioning vendor
• Quickly review video to
identify problematic words
or names
• Submit video to AST
• Review returned caption file
to fix errors, if any
• Upload to YouTube
the word recognition errors, because the machine transcription
was done through voice recognition, but also timing errors,
discovered that the timing of the wording in the file was also
Compare processes
Machine Transcription
• Download MT file from
YouTube
• Fix word recognition and
timing errors
• Upload to YouTube
AST captioning vendor
• Quickly review video to
identify problematic words
or names
• Submit video to AST
• Review returned caption file
to fix errors, if any
• Upload to YouTube
inaccurate more than we would like it to be. So once those
corrections were made they were uploaded back to ? YouTube.
For the automatic sync technologies first the video was
Compare processes
Machine Transcription
• Download MT file from
YouTube
• Fix word recognition and
timing errors
• Upload to YouTube
AST captioning vendor
• Quickly review video to
identify problematic words
or names
• Submit video to AST
• Review returned caption file
to fix errors, if any
• Upload to YouTube
reviewed to identify any problematic words or names. With AST
you can submit those words as a transcriber’s guide so they can
get them right in the initial pass through rather than having to
Compare processes
Machine Transcription
• Download MT file from
YouTube
• Fix word recognition and
timing errors
• Upload to YouTube
AST captioning vendor
• Quickly review video to
identify problematic words
or names
• Submit video to AST
• Review returned caption file
to fix errors, if any
• Upload to YouTube
correct those after the fact. So that review was done, submitted
the video to automatic sync and then reviewed the return
caption file to fix any errors if there were any and uploaded it to
YouTube.
Compare costs
Machine Transcription
AST captioning vendor
• Editing time per video (avg): • Editing time per video (avg):
• 114 minutes
• 31 minutes
• Employee cost:
• Employee cost:
• $8.50/hour
• $8.50/hour
• Avg Cost per video:
• $16.20
• Employee Cost per video:
• $4.47
• Avg AST Cost per video:
• $8.01
• Avg Cost per video:
• $12.48
So the result of doing these 16 videos in both fashions, we
found out a number of things. The cost for machine
transcription, the student editing time for each of those videos
Compare costs
Machine Transcription
AST captioning vendor
• Editing time per video (avg): • Editing time per video (avg):
• 114 minutes
• 31 minutes
• Employee cost:
• Employee cost:
• $8.50/hour
• $8.50/hour
• Avg Cost per video:
• $16.20
• Employee Cost per video:
• $4.47
• Avg AST Cost per video:
• $8.01
• Avg Cost per video:
• $12.48
averaged 114 minutes. So almost 2 hours, to correct all of the
recognition mistakes, correct the timing and have it usable.
So our employee cost, our student employee was $8.50 an hour,
Compare costs
Machine Transcription
AST captioning vendor
• Editing time per video (avg): • Editing time per video (avg):
• 114 minutes
• 31 minutes
• Employee cost:
• Employee cost:
• $8.50/hour
• $8.50/hour
• Avg Cost per video:
• $16.20
• Employee Cost per video:
• $4.47
• Avg AST Cost per video:
• $8.01
• Avg Cost per video:
• $12.48
and that makes the cost, the average cost per video, $16.20. For
submitting it to a vendor, the editing time collectively both
before submitting it to AST and afterwards was 31 minutes on
Compare costs
Machine Transcription
AST captioning vendor
• Editing time per video (avg): • Editing time per video (avg):
• 114 minutes
• 31 minutes
• Employee cost:
• Employee cost:
• $8.50/hour
• $8.50/hour
• Avg Cost per video:
• $16.20
• Employee Cost per video:
• $4.47
• Avg AST Cost per video:
• $8.01
• Avg Cost per video:
• $12.48
average. Employee cost is the same. So that the cost per video
for the employee’s time was $4.47. That does not include AST
cost which on average per video was a little more than $8.00,
Compare costs
Machine Transcription
AST captioning vendor
• Editing time per video (avg): • Editing time per video (avg):
• 114 minutes
• 31 minutes
• Employee cost:
• Employee cost:
• $8.50/hour
• $8.50/hour
• Avg Cost per video:
• $16.20
• Employee Cost per video:
• $4.47
• Avg AST Cost per video:
• $8.01
• Avg Cost per video:
• $12.48
making the total then $12.50, $12.48. And you can see that
that is roughly 75% of what we spent to correct something that
was free.
What I Learned #1
• A captioning vendor can be a better solution
than alternatives in some cases.
So what I learned there is that a captioning vendor can be a
better alternative in some cases depending on what you’re
starting with and what you’re trying to end up with. But it is
What I Learned #1
• A captioning vendor can be a better solution
than alternatives in some cases.
not necessarily intuitive that it’s less expensive to pay someone
else than to do it yourself. But that is something we learned
through this process. Not only that, but we found some
unexpected benefits.
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
Remember all those 200 videos in YouTube on the Purdue
channel. when we got through most of those and I was
contacting the undergraduate admissions office to see if they
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
had videos on their website that needed to be captioned to
improve accessibility. [I] found out that low and behold, they
were using. almost all of the videos on their website are drawn
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
from the Purdue channel YouTube site. So that when we
captioned those YouTube videos on the Purdue channel, undergraduate admissions all of a sudden had most all of their videos
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
captioned for under-graduate admissions. So, sometimes good
things can happen even though you don’t plan for them. Any
questions about that before I go on?
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
Questions from audience Inaudible
Quality? Tell me more about what you mean.
Question from audience inaudible.
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
Yes final product indistinguishable as far as we could tell. We
did not do the research to ask particular individuals to go
through and tell us. Yes, another question
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
Questions from audience inaudible
We chose 16 different ones with a variety of times and a variety
of background noises and things like that so that it, so it would
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
not be, so we would have a true comparison about, so the
shortest one was about 2 minutes, the longest one was eight or
10 minutes. Does that answer? your question?
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
Questions from audience inaudible
Ok, the automatic sync vendor that we’re using doesn’t require
a contract. You can set up an account which is free and then
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
you submit videos to them and they will bill your school or your
department at the end of the month for things that you
submitted to them. You can also reduce the cost by paying
What I Learned #2
• Providing captions in one area can lead to
unexpected benefits in another area
• Undergraduate Admissions now has captions on
almost all of their online video content
ahead on an account, and then the cost per video minute goes
down based by how much you buy at a time.
Questions from audience inaudible
Administrative Video
Right. Right. So administrative video number two.
Commencement ceremonies. I have a picture of a number of
students in their cap and gowns. At Purdue commencement
Administrative Video
ceremonies are held in a pretty large auditorium that seats 5 or
6000 students and it is also shown on the local access cable TV
channel and it’s also simulcast on the web. So when I was
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
thinking about approaching commencement and trying to get
captioning going there, again I knew this was something very
public facing, wanted it to be accessible. What did I start with, I
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
started with a lot of fears of the unknown, a lot of fears of the
unknown, I, my original thought was OK lets try to captioning for
the audience in the hall, because really until I talked to the folks
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
I wasn’t aware that it was simulcast on the web. So, I called
the registrar’s office, they referred me to this unit of campus
called hall of music productions. They’re the people who do the
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
TV broadcast and all of that kind of TV collaboration kind of
thing. So, talked to them, told them my idea and they said
providing captions on screens inside the halls is actually a lot
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
more difficult than you’d think it would be just walking off the
street. So they said that is more of a long-term project so let go
of that idea, but then found out that it was broadcast on TV and
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
simulcast. And we were chatting some more and he said, well,
how do you want to go about doing this and I said boy I don’t
know. And he said we already have a system in place for doing
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
the TV show for the football coach and the two basketball
coaches. Do you want to just use the system we have in place.
And I said, well, yeah [laughter]. How great to find out that the
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
system was already in place and all the technology was already
available. They already had a captioning vendor, a live
captioning vendor that they used for the TV broadcast. I could
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
just contact the captioning vendor, schedule her for the
commencement times. She and her company were available.
She knew the system at Purdue because she has worked with
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
them before. She knew the numbers to call in to. It requires
two phone lines to do this remote with realtime captioning. So
we used that system, and it worked out great. In our
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
conversation then talking about, well this is going to be captions
on the TV broadcast but what happens when the that gets, that
video signal gets sent to the webcast. What happens to the
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
captions then? Well, again, none of us knew. And what
happened was that the hall of music productions people who do
the TV, collaborated with the ITAP, information technology at
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
Purdue, the IT group, that works on that simulcast, to send that
out And they got together and called me one day and said, you
know, we’ve worked on this and we can transfer the captions
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
from the TV directly to the simulcast without having to redo it.
Wow great, thank you for figuring that out for me. So what I
found out is that my fears were unfounded. You know, people
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
were willing to be open to ideas and they, and that may not
always be the case, but I have found it more often than I
expected to on campus, The quality production folks were
Commencement Ceremonies
• At Purdue, available on:
• Local access cable TV
• Simultaneous webcast
• What did I start with?
• Fear of the unknown
• My fears were unfounded
honest enough to say, we can’t easily this stuff in the hall but
we can address the TV broadcast and the simulcast. In actuality
that may affect more people than those who were in the hall.
What I Learned #3
• New collaborations to provide captions can
come from unexpected places.
So one of the things that I’ve learned is that new collaborations
to provide captions can come from unexpected places. I had no
idea going into it that the hall of music productions was going to
What I Learned #3
• New collaborations to provide captions can
come from unexpected places.
be able to just plop this system in place for me and that they
would be able to coordinate with the ITAP group to figure out
captions on the simulcast. So rely on people on campus. Let
What I Learned #3
• New collaborations to provide captions can
come from unexpected places.
them provide guidance and it might happen more often than
you expect. Yes question.
Question from audience inaudible
Academic video
Ok, now academic video. who has heard of echo 360? Okay, a
few hands. It is a lecture capture system, it is what we use at
Purdue. Lecture capture saves audio. It can save audio and
Academic video
presentations through the projector. It can also be able to
capture video from the back of the room so it has multiple
possibilities. But it was on my radar to provide captioning
Academic video
through this because I had a feeling that we run across at some
point a situation where a student needed captions on this
recorded lecture and I wanted to know how to make that work
Academic video
so that, again, we could pass it on to folks in the future. Now it
turns out that, yes ma’am?
Questions from audience inaudible
Academic video
Lecture capture system? I do not know, does anybody in the
room know how much this costs?…
Answer from audience inaudible
Academic video
So to repeat, some of what the discussion was, that really the
price depends on a number of factors, depending upon the
vendor, and how many classrooms you have, what hardware
Academic video
and software you want there. I know at Purdue we’ve got
several hundred classrooms. Most of them are only collecting
audio. There were seven particular rooms designated to have
Academic video
all of the hardware to capture all of the stuff that we’re going to
talk about here. Another question.
Question from audience inaudible
Academic video
Mobile vs. fixed is another consideration. Ok. Did that answer
your question ma’am? Ok,you’re welcome.
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
So what I learned about echo 360 is that they already have a
business relationship with automatic sync technologies.
That if we, if we decide that we want captions on this particular
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
classes, lectures for this semester; In my mind, I’m sure it is not
as simple as this, there is a check box that says yes we want
captioning. And then, they’ve got a system in the background
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
that sends it off to AST to get captions and the file is sent back.
I’ll give you some more in a second, more information. So we
were just waiting for the opportunity to arise, it didn’t happen
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
in the fall of 2009 but it did in spring of 2010. So we had a
distance education contact our disabilities services office and I
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
was collaborating with them, so we started negotiations,
contacted the right people.
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
For me collaboration with the IT unit in charge of echo 360 was
critical because you, you remember that check box I said, it is
not that easy. There was some effort, it didn’t take them all
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
week but it was more than just you know a few minutes to get
this in place, there was coding to be done and other things. He
needed to know our account at AST and he needed to know our
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
LOGIN and password for that. So that was critical. But once we
had their collaboration and got that setup, it worked flawlessly
all semester for both of those classes and in two or three
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
business days which is the usual turnaround time for AST, those
caption files came back, were integrated with the lecture
capture for that day and then made available. And the student
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
used that, those captions and the best part was she said that
they were very very helpful to her. So we found a way to find
Echo 360 (cont.)
• A distance education student needed captions in
2 classes
• Collaboration with the IT unit in charge of Echo
360 was critical
• Effort required to set up the “automatic”
submission
• In 2 or 3 business days, the caption file was
returned & integrated into the recorded lecture
• Student found the captions very helpful
out how to get captions involved with our lecture capture so
that now in the future we can do that more easily.
Echo 360 Captions
This is just a screen capture of what the echo 360 recording
looks like. There’s a large window with the video. There’s a
smaller window with the video and the captions, to the left
Echo 360 Captions
hand side, and the captions look small from this view but if
you’re looking at it from a computer then it is sizable enough to
be able to read easily.
Echo 360 Captions
Yes sir.
Question from audience inaudible
It was not a hybrid class. This student was listening to the
Echo 360 Captions
lecture, she was able to listen to the lecture live but then she
could go back and pull up the lecture capture with the captions
once the captions were available several days later. Does that
Echo 360 Captions
answer your question? Ok.
Question from audience inaudible
Yes it does or it can be set up that way.
What I Learned #4
• Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
OK. So what I learned from that was, talk to the vendors.
Sometimes they have connections and availability to provide
captions that I wouldn’t think possible. I recently learned that
What I Learned #4
• Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
there is another lecture capture system, which I can’t come up
with a name right now, but it also has capturing functionality
built in but I don’t know which vendor they use but it is good to
What I Learned #4
• Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
know that they’re thinking about it. So often in our experience
people, vendors are not thinking about it, but if we ask
questions we may find some things that really help out what
What I Learned #4
• Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
we’re trying to do.
Yes sir.
Question from audience inaudible
What I Learned #4
• Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
Oh, caption. What did he say.
Answer from audience inaudible.
Okay, okay, Sonic Foundry. Ok, so they have a relationship with
AST as well, not a different vendor. Ok.
What I Learned #4
• Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
Audience input inaudible.
Again, for the recording, Sonic Foundry is the company and the
name of the product is Mediasite,
What I Learned #4
• Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
Audience input inaudible
M E D I A S I T E. One word.
Audience input inaudible
What I Learned #4
• Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
Okay. Okay.
Audience input inaudible.
Okay. So it can be very expensive depending upon a number of
factors.
Intercollegiate Athletics
Okay. Intercollegiate athletics. I’ve got a logo up for twitter and
Cover it Live How many of you have heard of Cover It Live before
.OK just one. Our focus on intercollegiate athletics came about
Intercollegiate Athletics
when Ohio State was sued by a deaf fan. Now how many of you
are familiar with that case? Okay just a few hands. Ken from
Ohio State raised his hand.
Intercollegiate Athletics
• Ohio State case
• Athletics explored potential for captions on scoreboards
• Not possible at this time
• Could captions be provided directly to mobile devices in
sports venues?
• Desire to caption the words of the announcer, during the
game and during breaks
It got the attention of the big 10 at least schools, because the
deaf fan sued university by saying that the game
announcements at the football stadium are not accessible to
Intercollegiate Athletics
• Ohio State case
• Athletics explored potential for captions on scoreboards
• Not possible at this time
• Could captions be provided directly to mobile devices in
sports venues?
• Desire to caption the words of the announcer, during the
game and during breaks
me. This is information you’re providing to everyone else but
not to me. And he asked for captions to be on the scoreboard.
And my recollection, and correct me if I’m wrong Ken, it wasn’t,
Intercollegiate Athletics
• Ohio State case
• Athletics explored potential for captions on scoreboards
• Not possible at this time
• Could captions be provided directly to mobile devices in
sports venues?
• Desire to caption the words of the announcer, during the
game and during breaks
it did not go to court was, it was settled out of court, but Ohio
State wound up putting captions on their scoreboard,
Minnesota did the same and I’m not sure if there are others.
Intercollegiate Athletics
• Ohio State case
• Athletics explored potential for captions on scoreboards
• Not possible at this time
• Could captions be provided directly to mobile devices in
sports venues?
• Desire to caption the words of the announcer, during the
game and during breaks
But I know on our campus at least it led to a conversation with
our athletic department. And the desire, just to be clear, is to
caption all of the words that the PA announcer makes both
Intercollegiate Athletics
• Ohio State case
• Athletics explored potential for captions on scoreboards
• Not possible at this time
• Could captions be provided directly to mobile devices in
sports venues?
• Desire to caption the words of the announcer, during the
game and during breaks
during the game action and in between, timeouts and all those
things. OK. So, as I said, I contacted Purdue athletics to talk
about this idea; they were open to conversation; they looked
Intercollegiate Athletics
• Ohio State case
• Athletics explored potential for captions on scoreboards
• Not possible at this time
• Could captions be provided directly to mobile devices in
sports venues?
• Desire to caption the words of the announcer, during the
game and during breaks
into the scoreboard both at the football stadium and the
basketball stadium and they said “not possible at this time for
the size constraints” if I understand correctly. So I did not want
Intercollegiate Athletics
• Ohio State case
• Athletics explored potential for captions on scoreboards
• Not possible at this time
• Could captions be provided directly to mobile devices in
sports venues?
• Desire to caption the words of the announcer, during the
game and during breaks
to leave it at that so I said well, what about the possibility of
providing captions directly to mobile devices? I was not aware,
hadn’t of anything that people had tied that. But it seemed like
Intercollegiate Athletics
• Ohio State case
• Athletics explored potential for captions on scoreboards
• Not possible at this time
• Could captions be provided directly to mobile devices in
sports venues?
• Desire to caption the words of the announcer, during the
game and during breaks
a possible thing to do since doing it on the scoreboard wasn’t
going to be possible.
Captions Using Twitter
• Challenging to keep posts below 140 character
limit
• Student testing showed that posts took about a
minute to show up
• Too long for game captioning
So the first thing we tried was Twitter. I was a novice at Twitter
going into this. Well, novice at a lot of things. Many of you may
be aware but I was not, that these PA announcer scripts let’s
Captions Using Twitter
• Challenging to keep posts below 140 character
limit
• Student testing showed that posts took about a
minute to show up
• Too long for game captioning
start with basketball, are scripted, what the PA announcer says
just does not come off the top of his head, he’s reading from a
script during timeouts, halftime, those kinds of things. The only
Captions Using Twitter
• Challenging to keep posts below 140 character
limit
• Student testing showed that posts took about a
minute to show up
• Too long for game captioning
thing that isn’t scripted is what he or she says during the game
action like “Don Johnson scores three” or whatever. I was going
into it thinking that we would need to have a captionist or a
Captions Using Twitter
• Challenging to keep posts below 140 character
limit
• Student testing showed that posts took about a
minute to show up
• Too long for game captioning
stenographer to be able to keep up. But finding out that there
was a script we could use a student employer and cut and paste.
The trouble with twitter is that the script does not come in 140
Captions Using Twitter
• Challenging to keep posts below 140 character
limit
• Student testing showed that posts took about a
minute to show up
• Too long for game captioning
character blocks (laughter). So that was a challenge. But we
worked with it a little bit, got good enough to the point where
we said OK let’s have some students now come and try it. And
Captions Using Twitter
• Challenging to keep posts below 140 character
limit
• Student testing showed that posts took about a
minute to show up
• Too long for game captioning
when they came and tried it, the delay was a minute or more.
And for typical twitter conversation that probably is not a big
deal but in game situations a minute is like eternity. Lots of
Captions Using Twitter
• Challenging to keep posts below 140 character
limit
• Student testing showed that posts took about a
minute to show up
• Too long for game captioning
action can occur. And if I find out now that something happened
a minute ago, not helpful, so that was too long. So then we
turn to the tool called CoverIt Live.
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
On the Cover It Live web site, which is www.coveritlive.com.
Calls itself a web based live blogging tool. All that means is, it’s
created to do live things. Can be news events. Cover It Live was
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
used a lot during the election day a couple of weeks ago. New
events, lots of things happening. Anybody who is an
administrator can post information there and you can open it up
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
to have guests or anybody post to it, and everybody gets to add
their input all on this one page. So what was attractive to us
was that there was no limit to the number of characters in a
particular post.
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
Yes ma’am.
Question from audience inaudible
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
So the question is: is it like facebook where you can develop
friends. It is not exactly like that. Right,if you have the URL to
the live event then it comes up on the your screen and you can
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
read the post and as new posts come up they are added to
either the top or the bottom and that scrolls automatically.
Question from audience inaudible
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
The person who creates the live event kit will e-mail it to you
or, you can, there might be a situation where let’s say, Purdue
athletics says we’re going to have this all the time in the future
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
than people who would want to use that would go to the
Purdue athletics site and get the URL for the upcoming game
there. Does that help - okay. So no limit on posts and in
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
experiments in the spring we found out that the new posts
show up in just a few seconds. It’s not as much as a minute.
Blackberry issues - I’m not trying to beat down on blackberry –
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
but we’ve had some difficulty with them being able to go to
the live event and pull it up. I will tell you more in the next slide.
If anybody is interested in following up on this we have some
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
things with Blackberry. So the basketball season ended in the
spring before we could get student testing on Cover It Live. One
of the things that we found out was our target audience -
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
students who are deaf or hard of hearing - have text enabled
phones but the ones that we were communicating with did not
have Web enabled phones, so cover it live was not going to be
Captions Using CoveritLive
• CoveritLive is a web based live blogging tool
(www.coveritlive.com)
• No limit on number of characters in post
• Posts show up in a few seconds on most web-enabled
mobile devices
• Blackberry issues
• Season ended before student testing could be conducted
in Spring 2010
accessible to them at all. I think I’ve mentioned that the athletic
department at Purdue has been l great to work with and been
very supportive.
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
Their feeling is that if this will work it is going to be more cost
effective than trying to redo the scoreboard to put captioning
there. So we went to them over the summer and they were
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
willing to purchase three iiPod Touches that we can loan to
students. So we are in the process, basketball season just
started, we tried in the football stadium, we have wifi issues
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
there. I will just say it that way. So now we’re looking forward
to doing it in the basketball arena and testing with students will
begin again soon. We started testing with ourselves to make
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
sure that it was working the way we thought it was going to
work with the iPod touches and the longest delay during the
game we did the testing on was 10 seconds. I think that’s
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
manageable. I thought we had figured out the blackberry
issues. I was working with Cover It Live. They gave me some
information. I was able to test that over the summer and the
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
two blackberry users that we’ve been working with - primarily
both Purdue employees - said yeah they can get to that event
and we didn’t have any event material. We didn’t have anything
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
going but they could get to the event and see it. That was an
improvement over what they saw before, because they would
go to the URL and it would just be like a black box. So we
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
thought we had it figured out but now we’ve done testing and
they are still unable, they can go to the URL and see it but they
still can’t open it.
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
Question from audience inaudible
They have not tried other browsers and that is, that is what I am
told is the problem. Blackberry has developed its own web
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
browser and, they are not, it is not based on this standard web
kit I guess it is called. I’m not an expert. Where most other
handheld devices have used this web kit standard as the basis
Captions & CoveritLive (cont.)
• Athletic Dept very supportive of this project
• Purchased 3 iPod Touches to loan to students
• Testing with students will begin soon
• Blackberry issues continue
for their web browser. I was told that Blackberry is working on a
browser that is based on the web kit standard. So if that comes
out from Blackberry then we may be OK.
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
But that is where we stand with blackberry right now. I hope
that improves. I guess I have decided that there’s so much
potential that we’re going to move forward with the iPod
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
Touches and Cover It Live and see if that works. And if it does
we will have to provide some type of disclaimer at the beginning
of, if you’re a Blackberry user then you may want to think about
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
getting something else. Laughter. I’m not sure what I’d say but...
Comment from audience inaudible
Is that right? Ok.
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
The comment was that there are other browsers that can be
installed on the blackberry. So.. Right, sure. But thank you.
Question from audience inaudible
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
Yes, a unique URL per event because after the event is finished
live action it stays at that URL as an archive if you want to go
back to it.
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
Question from audience inaudible
Yeah, yeah. Is your question about Cover It Live being able to
accept that or 6000 people trying to get on…
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
Audience comment inaudible
Cover It Live tells me that they, through their web site and
information, because they are working with really big names
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
like New York Times and other broadcast media, that they are
setup to handle large numbers of users at a time. As far as
locally can we get that many on, that is a great question. I hope
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
we get to the point where we get the test back. And I picture it
as taking steps. My first step is to get it so that students who
are deaf and hard of hearing can use it and if that’s working
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
well then we can announce it to everybody who is coming to the
games to say hey, if you want to try this… I don’t know if you
have had this experience but I’ve been at games where it’s
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
noisy, it’s loud or the person talking at the microphone is
[mimics muffled talked at mic] and you cannot understand what
he or she is saying. It would be nice sometimes if you could just
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
look at a mobile device and say “oh that’s what he said”. I think
there's some benefit to opening it up to everybody at the game
if it is working well and once we get to that point I think your
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
question about whether we will be able to handle that will come
into play. That is a great question, but I can’t really answer it
Question from audience inaudible
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
It’s free. Cover It Live is in business to make money so they’ve
got like a free, there’s a free tool and then there are other things
that you can add to it if you want to pay money. For instance if
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
we were a big company and wanted to advertise. I will give you
a quick example. Our local, in Lafayette, Indiana, our local TV
station is WLFI, and we had some severe weather a couple of
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
weeks ago. There were 50 mph winds and electricity going out.
They used Cover It Live to do a live blog session and people from
all over the county were saying what their status was locally.
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
They might have used the free version of cover it live but they
might have used the paid version because you get to add other
advertising and other things to it, that they could sell that
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
advertising space to. Is that making sense? So, at our level it’s
free and it has the, has the features that work for us but if you
wanted to spend money, you can get other features and that
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
would help that company make money doing that. Okay? So
what I learned from this is, obvious solution is captions on the
scoreboard but if that obvious solution cannot be put in place
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
for whatever reason, weather there's resistance or the
technology will not support it or money problems, whatever it
is, sometimes that can lead to a creative solution and under the
What I Learned #5
• When the obvious solution won’t work, it can
lead to a more creative solution. It may be better
than the obvious solution.
best circumstances that creative solution may actually be better
than the more obvious solution once you get to it. Not always
the case but I try to be optimistic.
What I Learned Recap
1. A captioning vendor can be a better solution than
alternatives in some cases.
2. Providing captions in one area can lead to unexpected
benefits in another area
3. New collaborations to provide captions can come from
unexpected places.
4. Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
5. When the obvious solution won’t work, it can lead to a
more creative solution. It may be better than the
obvious solution.
So a recap of the things I learned in this project for me.
Captioning vendor can be actually a better solution than
alternatives in some cases. Providing captions in one area can
What I Learned Recap
1. A captioning vendor can be a better solution than
alternatives in some cases.
2. Providing captions in one area can lead to unexpected
benefits in another area
3. New collaborations to provide captions can come from
unexpected places.
4. Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
5. When the obvious solution won’t work, it can lead to a
more creative solution. It may be better than the
obvious solution.
lead to unexpected benefits in another area, remember that
was the YouTube. New collaborations to provide captions can
come from unexpected places. That was the commencement
What I Learned Recap
1. A captioning vendor can be a better solution than
alternatives in some cases.
2. Providing captions in one area can lead to unexpected
benefits in another area
3. New collaborations to provide captions can come from
unexpected places.
4. Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
5. When the obvious solution won’t work, it can lead to a
more creative solution. It may be better than the
obvious solution.
ceremony where they figured out how to make that happen. I
didn’t have to. Four, ask questions of vendors. Look for things
that are built in and collaborations that are built in to provide
What I Learned Recap
1. A captioning vendor can be a better solution than
alternatives in some cases.
2. Providing captions in one area can lead to unexpected
benefits in another area
3. New collaborations to provide captions can come from
unexpected places.
4. Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
5. When the obvious solution won’t work, it can lead to a
more creative solution. It may be better than the
obvious solution.
captioning. That won’t always be the case but if we don't ask
we won't find out. Then the recent one when the obvious
solution won’t work then look for something more creative and
What I Learned Recap
1. A captioning vendor can be a better solution than
alternatives in some cases.
2. Providing captions in one area can lead to unexpected
benefits in another area
3. New collaborations to provide captions can come from
unexpected places.
4. Ask questions of vendors and look for built-in
collaborations to provide captioning.
5. When the obvious solution won’t work, it can lead to a
more creative solution. It may be better than the
obvious solution.
that might be a better solution for you. With that I would like to
just say thank you for coming, I appreciate your time and I will
open it up questions.