| | November 20209CIOReviewIMPROVING CLOSED-CAPTIONINGAnother major issue found in the IT Accessibility Risk Statement and Evidence report was related to numerous challenges regarding closed captioning. Failure to provide accurate video closed captioning was listed as one of the primary consumer complaints to the OCR. Captioning has become a major concern of higher education administrations because of the cost and time management of providing real-time services. In addition to instructional uses, captioning services are also required in other aspects of college life. The National Association for the Deaf (NAD) filed lawsuits against several academic institutions for failure to provide captioning of announcements and commentary made public at sporting events.Since instructors rely on narrated presentations and videos in their courses, some institutions have paced captioning responsibilities on the instructors. Embedding captions in videos as derivative works can prove challenging in some cases where copyright permissions are not granted. Unless the video allows permission to modify, such as a creative commons license (CC-BY), instructors have to secure an accessible copy of the video. Many individuals unable to secure the materials they need for their teaching have begun to create their own learning resources. This practice can prove problematic if these individuals do not know how to create an equivalent caption or transcript properly. Institutions have created procurement policies that will not allow the purchase of resources that are inaccessible for modification. The IT industry can take a greater lead in working with higher education to develop more cost-effective strategies to create closed-captioned learning objects. More importantly, products with video and audio content should also provide closed captioning and transcripts from the beginning. Such development merits not only students with disabilities, but also second language learners, international students, and individuals who prefer listening to reading.INCREASING ACCESSIBILITY OF OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCESWhile many OERs are developed with UDL principles and open textbook repositories such as the OER Commons, Merlot, and the Open Textbook Network (OTN) are involved with curating resources that have been evaluated for their accessibility, there needs to be a consistent practice in place for the curation of all OERs. IT Leaders involved in any digital repository project should consider increasing the accessibility of the open education resources they include in their platforms.All of the resources that are being curated should include an accessibility statement, and if the resource includes multimedia, then there needs to be closed captioning or transcripts for the resource. It is equally important that items being curated be CC-BY licensed to ensure the greatest level of modification. While open education resources can offer several licenses, it is best to curate those resources that ensure the greatest level of flexibility for learning. In 2013, MERLOT, Open Education Consortium, California State University, and the National Federation of the Blind worked together to create an OER toolkit that enables content creators to develop accessible materials. This project proved very helpful in developing accessible OERs, but much more needs to be done. IT leaders can further focus on the development of additional tools that make it easier for education technologists and educators to develop accessible content. More work needs to focus on developing accessible content for mathematics and second language learning. Having such tools can also help develop much needed ancillary materials to supplement OER textbooks. Ancillary material development will further increase the adoption of open access materials and support affordable learning for disadvantaged learners. Access to education is a universal right. We bear the responsibility of engaging in collaborative projects that support this mission. Through collaboration, IT leaders and higher education officials could expand open education by finding strategies to prepare accessibility statements better, improve the use of closed captioning, and increase OER accessibility. Working together to resolves these risk management issues will advance open access to education and make a global impact on learning.
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