The Importance of Captioning in Education: Ensuring Accessibility for All Students (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: I had to watch a video today and it had no captions and five minutes in I just, I couldn't do it, I just put my head down on the table and I just went to sleep because there was no point in me watching the uncaptioned video because I couldn't understand what they were saying at all.

Speaker 2: Students might have to watch a DVD and then answer questions as a result of that and then maybe write some narratives around that and if they haven't heard clearly what was said and if they can't see the interactions on screen when so many characters turn their faces away, so so much information is lost so that they, students who are hearing impaired or deaf need captions.

Speaker 3: In science we watch a lot of videos and sometimes they have an accent and I can't really understand it. I would prefer if it did have captions because the little things I'm missing out on could be really important and it could affect what I'm learning, it might give me like a worse mark than I would have gotten if there were captions and I got those little bits of information.

Speaker 4: The one area that is glaringly devoid of good captioning is the classroom and of course the problem with that is it's where everything starts so the kids who are hearing impaired we want to make sure they're not disadvantaged from the word go.

Speaker 5: The biggest difficulty I've experienced in teaching a subject like history is finding the resources, the documentaries and things like that that are closed captioned to use with the students.

Speaker 2: It's only 58% of new release DVDs on the marketplace are captioned and so many of the titles that teachers use they take from the marketplace.

Speaker 1: I lip read a lot so they say the background music is really loud or the person's not facing me. When that's happening I can't really understand what they're saying but with captions on I get the whole idea what the picture is and what's going on and it helps, yeah it helps a lot.

Speaker 6: They really help a lot for me understanding what the movie's about so if I have like questions on that topic I'll be able to answer it.

Speaker 7: So it's just not for the hearing kids, it's for second language children, children that are very visual with their learning. So I think it's everybody benefits, it's a great benefit for kids with hearing problems but I think it's a great benefit for everybody.

Speaker 8: With the captioning alone I think all students are the winners there because we can't concentrate for 50 minutes straight.

Speaker 2: We've got an accessible education database so that teachers and students can actually key into that database and find a way to find captioned titles.

Speaker 4: Not all schools are the same, not all teachers are the same and not all students are the same so what we have to do is put it in different environments with different technology solutions and then say okay what are the problems people are facing, how do the people actually interact with the technology, what's their level of knowledge before they start and we have to come up with ways of training people in that, dealing with that and ultimately making it work in a much broader environment.

Speaker 9: All the teachers being educated on it, it's just wonderful because it just gives them a bit of knowledge of how a child would feel who's hearing impaired in a classroom.

Speaker 2: When children and students feel that they're included in a process and they're part of a whole then they're more able to take on board learning experiences.

Speaker 4: It's really getting the message out there that these issues are really important and that they actually form part of a broad solution to the access needs of kids in schools.

Speaker 8: I would hope that every one of my fellow principals is out there looking for opportunities and ways of providing for the needs of every student.

Speaker 2: It helps them be with their friends in a way where they feel they can join in more fully and I think that's just lovely to see.

Speaker 10: Media Access Australia Inclusion through technology