Captioning at the University of Washington

By: Susie Hawkey, DO-IT Staff

Beginning Fall Quarter, Accessible Technology Services (ATS) at the University of Washington (UW) started to caption a limited number of UW video presentations without charge through a short-term funding opportunity supported by our central IT unit, UW-IT. Individuals, departments, and other units at the UW are encouraged to apply for funding to caption highly-visible, high-impact, strategic videos (such as videos available to the public on a high-use website, videos that will be used multiple times in a large course, and videos developed by faculty members to be used in several different classes).

In this effort we are promoting captioning as a best practice in teaching, not simply as an accommodation for individuals with hearing impairments. This message is shared in our video Captions: Improving Access to Postsecondary Education.

The response to the video captioning project has been very positive. So far we have captioned over 85 videos totaling more than 39 hours that we expect to be seen by more than 15,000 individuals each year.