Captions completely under a video in Canvas Studio?

[PLDeMartini]

Hey there,

One of our instructors has been wondering if there's a way in Studio for captions to appear completely under the video itself, as opposed to the bottom of the video's frame. In this case, captions at the bottom of the video actually block onscreen content, and so become an unintended barrier for visual learners and Deaf/HOH students.

Has anyone else run into this issue? We should have the ability for captions to be visible and not obscure other instructional content, but this doesn't seem the case in Studio at present. I know the captioning capabilities and editing UI in Studio have changed often the last few years, and always for the better in my opinion (this includes the shift from captions appearing at the top of a video to the bottom).

Thanks for any replies, thoughts, or alternatives anyone might suggest.

- Paul DeMartini, Instructional Accessibility Technician

[themidiman]

This requires a workaround for the video to be re-encoded either inside of Studio or outside of Studio with an authoring tool with open captions appearing all the time. YouTube gets around this by allowing the web browser-based player user to drag the captions around the video window to wherever the viewer wants them to be. The best of both worlds is to provide a pop-out timed captions window that syncs with the playback. It could be on the side where the viewer could even click the captions and the playback would jump to the timestamp of that caption. The Amara player is a great example of what the Studio Player could eventually be.

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Welcome @PLDeMartini to the Instructure Community! 

Thank you for sharing how closed captions can be a barrier for students accessing the content in Studio videos. Besides the suggestions from @themidiman, another option is to not use a portion of the screen when making the video so that captions do not block any content. Since Studio allows viewers some control over closed caption appearance and location, that would at least save viewers from having to frequently change how closed captions appear while they are watching Studio videos.