Canvas Studio Auto-generated Captions Censoring Words

[cthomas5]

Hello,

Is there anything that can be done to disable the censoring that happens in the auto-generated captions in Canvas Studio? I am a Canvas admin and I had a faculty member report to me over the weekend that Studio was censoring words including "pornography" and "orgasm" in her lecture. These words are crucial to the lecture content, so not only is this needless censorship in a higher education forum, but it is also an accessibility issue for students who rely on captions to be accurate.

The instructor obviously was able to edit the captions and correct the censored words, but she should not have had to do that. "Pornography" and "orgasm" are not profanity. And I would argue that words traditionally considered to be profane, should not be censored in captions either if we are truly concerned about providing an equitable experience to our students who rely on captions.

Please advise!

[StephaniePiazza · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

I am the instructor who is having to edit my captions so often because Canvas Studio bleeps out words it apparently considers profane. The truth is that there is no such thing as a “good” word or a “bad” word. It’s context that makes a word good or bad. This is absolutely unacceptable and I want this issue resolved for the reasons outlined above.

Human sexuality is a theme in my course and Canvas not only bleeps out words like “pornography” and “orgasm” but there are several other words it arbitrarily bleeps out like "**bleep**" and "**bleep**" which are relevant to the curriculum in my course.

Not only is this an accessibility issue, but it’s also a censorship issue. And especially considering our current political climate where curriculum and books are being banned across our country, this cannot be tolerated.

Please advise as I’d like to take action to reverse this censorship/roadblock to accessibility.

Case in point: It is bleeping out my words even here! Can't even fix it by editing my post.