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Providing captions benefits all students but is critical for some. Learn how to provide professional captions for students registered with the Accessibility Service with access requirements during live classes on Microsoft Teams.
Why use professional captions
Professional captions are provided by a third-party service where a human provides the captions to deliver higher levels of accuracy than automated captions. This is critical for students who have captioning as an access requirement.
Before class
You will receive a notification from the Accessibility Service when you have a student in your subject who requires professional captioning for live classes. Then you will need to:
- Send the meeting links to Accessibility Service so they can book the professional captioner. Find the link text embedded in ‘Click here to join the meeting’ – the full URL link begins with: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/
- Source a good quality microphone, if you don’t have one already, as this can improve the accuracy of the captions.
- Find a quiet spot to facilitate the class to reduce background noise.
- Update the Accessibility Service if your class time or location changes.
Professional captioning is an expensive external service essential for students to access and participate in their classes.
Any class time or location changes must be communicated to the Accessibility Service as soon as possible (within 72 business hours of the class time and date) to ensure the supplier has the correct details to deliver services and that charges are not incurred where services are not required.
Start of class
You may need to admit the captioner into the meeting from the lobby. To do this:
- Select the participant’s icon when you receive the notification that they are in the lobby.
- Select Admit next to the captioner’s name or select View Lobby followed by the green tick.
Please note: you may need to do this every hour, as certain captioning services require captioners to change person for the role every hour for Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) reasons.
During class
During class there are several things you can do to improve the accuracy of the captions including:
- Single speaker and mute participants: set clear housekeeping rules for students about when they should and should not speak. This can reduce background noise and allow students to fully focus on one person at a time.
- Speak clearly and steadily: this can help the captioner to understand you.
- Good internet connection: ensure you have a strong internet connection.
When running breakout rooms
If you are running breakout rooms, the captioner will need to be manually moved into the correct breakout room. Follow these steps:
- Select breakout rooms.
- Select the captioner’s name.
- Select the correct breakout room from the drop-down menu under Room.
Alternatively, you can preassign the breakout rooms when you are scheduling the meeting to make sure the professional captioner is in the correct breakout room.
Don’t inadvertently disclose information about the captioner and don’t identify the student who they are captioning for – even if there are breakout rooms. Students have a right to privacy.