Audio & Video

If you decide to use audio files one easy thing to do to enhance the music or film is to add a text transcript of the audio. If it is a film a transcript of the dialogue enhances comprehension.

Students who are hearing impaired or who may not have English as their first language will find an additional text transcription to be very helpful. People with various cognitive and learning disabilities will also appreciate it. Also your students who do not have external speakers on their computers will still be able to appreciate your teaching style.

If you are using a piece of music which has a voice tract you can post the lyrics to the song. If the music is non-verbal you can say something like the title of the piece and list a note which simply says “music.”

If you want to add the transcript try putting it up as a link next to the link which opens the audio file. Label it in a way which lets your students know that it is a text transcript.

One last recommendation is that you go through your course and turn off all the sound. Then go back through your course again and see if your points are clear even if a student can’t access the audio portions of the course.

Think of reading a text file associated with audio as listening with your eyes. It is a new way of listening and can enrich everything you do.

A wonderful resource for exploring audio captioning is the Center for Accessible Media located in Boston Massachusetts. One set of audio description guidelines developed by C.A.M. is a document entitled, "Making Educational Software and Websites Accessible," in Appendix 5: General Audio Description Guidelines.
They can be found at http://ncam.wgbh.org/cdrom/guideline/appendix.html.

If you feel adventurous and want to try your hand at audio captioning C.A.M. also developed its own captioning software. MAGPIE is free and easy to use. It can be downloaded from:
http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/

There is also more information on making rich media accessible from the Rich Media Resource Center at:
http://ncam.wgbh.org/richmedia/index.php

This includes examples, tutorials, articles, and other tools for your use.