Audio Descriptions in Canvas Studio

[Kevin_W]

I was recently "dinged" by our communications department for sharing a video that didn't include Audio Descriptions. The video was a subtitle-only instructional video (no narration) for signing up for Multifactor Authentication at our institution. 

I had thought I was pretty on top of accessibility standards...but obviously not.

Questions:

• Are Audio Descriptions an accessiblity requirement?
• What programs are you using?
• Is there a solution for Canvas Studio? 

[diana_matthews]

I can't really help with all the specifics, but audio description is indeed a requirement under WCAG 2.0 at the AA level, which has been the level that most court decisions have cited. We are a bit stymied by that requirement as well. I found this page About Audio Descriptions from UC Berkeley that looks like it might be helpful. I'm not sure how Canvas videos in particular work with audio descriptions, so maybe someone else has more experience!

[kmallen]

We use a third party service (CaptionSync) for a lot of our captioning. They do have an Audio Description feature in one of their players, but they also allow us to put a standing comment on our account for transcribers/captioners to include audio descriptions. We are just beginning to use Studio, but we think we'll need to download the videos from Canvas, upload to this service, download the transcripts, then reupload into Canvas. I think it would be nice if the Studio team could develop third-party integrations with captioning providers to help us stay in compliance.