Repost: USM Accessibility in Action - February 2026 Issue
February 2026 Issue
Brought to you by the USM Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation and the
USM Digital Accessibility Work Group
Multimedia Accessibility At-a-Glance
Multimedia accessibility ensures that all learners can engage with video and audio content through captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions, creating an inclusive environment for students with sensory disabilities and those learning in noisy, distracting, or low-bandwidth environments.
What's Inside
Multimedia accessibility removes sensory barriers that prevent students, faculty, staff, and community members who are Deaf, Hard of Hearing, blind, or have low vision from fully engaging with video and audio content. Captions ensure that spoken information is accessible to people who cannot hear it, while audio descriptions make visual demonstrations, on-screen text, and non-verbal cues accessible to people who cannot see them. Transcripts provide an alternative format that benefits everyone, allowing users to search for specific content, review material at their own pace, or access information in low-bandwidth situations.
Beyond addressing sensory disabilities, multimedia accessibility supports Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles that benefit all students. Non-native English speakers can follow along more easily with captions, students in noisy environments (like commuter trains or shared living spaces) can engage with content without audio, and students with attention or cognitive processing differences can pause and review transcripts to reinforce understanding. When you make multimedia content accessible, you create a more inclusive and effective learning environment for all users.
Navigating the requirements for video and audio content doesn't have to be overwhelming. Our Multimedia Accessibility Quick Fix Guide uses a simple decision tree to help you identify exactly what your multimedia content needs, whether it's captions, transcripts, audio descriptions, or a combination of those, and provides step-by-step instructions for the free tools that can get the job done efficiently.
You don't need to be a video editing expert to make your multimedia content accessible. However, it's important to understand that AI-based auto-generated captions provided by popular platforms like Zoom, Panopto, YouTube, and Vimeo do not, by themselves, meet WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards for accuracy. WCAG requires captions to be "fully accurate" so that Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing viewers have an equivalent experience. Because AI often struggles with technical jargon, proper nouns, and diverse accents, these auto-generated captions are only a starting point for meeting accessibility standards. You must edit your captions before distributing your multimedia content. Focusing on "easy wins" can significantly reduce the time you spend on remediation while maximizing the impact for users.
Tips for Improving Caption Accuracy from the Start
Work from a Script: The easiest way to ensure accuracy is to prepare a script beforehand and stick to it during recording. If you upload your script to platforms like YouTube as a transcript file, the AI can sync your exact words to the audio, giving you near-perfect accuracy with minimal manual editing.
Better Audio Input: AI accuracy improves significantly with clear audio. Use an external microphone and intentionally enunciate complex vocabulary, technical terms, and proper nouns to reduce the number of errors the AI makes.
Speak Clearly and Pause: When recording, speak at a moderate pace and pause briefly between major ideas or sections to help the AI segment your speech more accurately.
Pre-Record Key Terms: At the beginning of your recording (which you can edit out later), slowly and clearly say any technical terms, names, or jargon you'll be using. Some AI systems learn from context within the same recording, improving accuracy for those terms throughout.
Where to Find Your Caption Editors
Once you've used our Quick Fix Guide to determine what you need to remediate, here's where to access the editing tools in popular platforms:
Zoom:
Settings > Recording > Advanced > Enable "Audio Transcript." After recording, access and edit captions: Recordings & Transcripts > Play Video (captions appear on side panel) > use the edit pencil icon to edit and save, which automatically saves to your transcript file.
Panopto:
Upload or record your video > Captions > Request Automatic Captions. After recording, edit directly in Panopto's caption editor: Open video > Open in Editor > Captions > Type directly into text boxes > Apply to save and update transcript
YouTube:
YouTube Studio > Subtitles > Select your video > Auto-generated > Click "Edit" to open the caption editor
Easy Wins for Editing Captions & Transcripts
When you access your platform's caption editor, the editing process is straightforward; most platforms allow you to click directly on text to make corrections, with changes saving automatically. Here are a few strategies to save you the most time:
The "Find and Replace" Strategy: Use the "Find and Replace" function to instantly fix recurring technical jargon, discipline-specific terms, or name misspellings across your entire transcript. Instead of correcting "poly merase" 15 times manually, fix it once and apply it everywhere.
Clean Captions for Cognitive Load: For non-native speakers and students with cognitive processing differences, an easy win is removing excessive filler words (e.g., um, uh, you know) from your captions. This creates a cleaner, more readable experience without losing the authentic tone of your lecture. This approach, called "clean verbatim," is the standard for educational captions and fully complies with WCAG requirements, which focus on substantive accuracy rather than preserving every utterance.
The Accuracy Standard: Aim for 99% accuracy to meet compliance standards for quality multimedia content!
Featured Tools
Audio Description: If you use YouTube videos in your course, YouDescribe is a free web-based tool that allows you to add audio descriptions to existing videos without re-editing the original file. Simply record your voice describing the visual content during natural pauses, and YouDescribe syncs it with the video timeline. This is perfect for making demonstrations, experiments, or visual lectures accessible to students with visual impairments.
Captions and Audio Description: CADET (Caption and Description Editing Tool) is a free, downloadable tool from GBH (formerly WGBH, Boston-based public broadcasting organization) that allows you to create high-quality captions and audio descriptions on your local computer. Great for offline work or sensitive content.
To truly understand the necessity of accessible multimedia, we must look beyond the technical requirements and see how these features function in practice. The following videos demonstrate why accuracy and description are vital for an equitable learning experience. First, a video from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights illustrates why relying solely on auto-captions is insufficient, showcasing several "auto-caption fails" that can lead to significant misunderstandings of educational content. Second, the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) video highlights the critical role of audio description for users who are blind or have low vision. While their examples draw from television and film, the lesson translates directly to our academic environment: whether you are demonstrating a lab experiment or presenting complex charts and graphs on a slide, providing audio descriptions ensures that all users can fully access and understand the visual components of your instruction.
Our Digital Accessibility Spring Cleaning event on January 8-9, 2026, marked a major milestone in our system-wide effort toward inclusive excellence. The response was overwhelming, with more than 1,500 faculty and staff registering for our virtual sessions and many more joining local activities hosted across our campuses. This incredible turnout underscores a shared commitment across the system to ensure our digital course materials are accessible to every student ahead of the 2026 deadline.
The two-day event kicked off with inspiring remarks from faculty and staff leadership, followed by a series of practical, hands-on sessions. Participants tackled everything from "low-hanging fruit" accessibility fixes to complex remediation in STEM, Art, and Music. Beyond the numbers, the event fostered a true sense of community; through our interactions with participants, we've seen hundreds of documents improved and a significant boost in faculty and staff confidence. This collective effort has turned a daunting task into a celebrated success, setting up a strong foundation for our ongoing accessibility work moving forward.
Find your top 5 documents with multimedia content and apply our Quick Fix Guide to add edited captions, provide an accompanying transcript, and/or add audio descriptions.
We want to celebrate the accessibility work happening across the USM! Whether you've made an accessibility improvement yourself or witnessed a colleague's great work, we want to hear about it. Share your own win or nominate someone else whose accessibility efforts deserve recognition. We'll feature selected stories on the USM Digital Accessibility Hub and on LinkedIn to highlight the excellent work happening across the System.
Share or Nominate an Accessibility Win
As part of the USM's accessibility support, the Kirwin Center for Academic Innovation is offering monthly remediation sprints for faculty and staff across the state of Maryland. These sprints will focus on one of the Six Essential Steps each month. The Zoom remediation sprints will include a few minutes of overview content and then active work time for you to remediate your own documents and ask any questions you may have. You can register for each sprint using the links below.
Monday, February 9, 2-3 pm: Multimedia Sprint, Register for the Sprint
Monday, March 9, 2-3 pm: Sprint to Finish, Register for the Sprint
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Dear CAHSS Graduate Students,
It’s time to elect your representatives for the Graduate Student Association Spring Semester-2026!
The CAHSS Senator elections are now open, and we invite you to cast your vote for your candidate choices.
Voting Period:
Opens Tuesday, February 03 at 12:00 PM
Closes Friday, February 06 at 11:59 PM
Important Links:
Your vote helps shape the graduate student leadership in CAHSS, ensuring your voice and concerns are represented.
Don’t miss this chance to make an impact—take a few minutes to read about the candidates and vote for the ones you feel will best serve our community.
Thank you for participating in this important process. Let’s work together to make our graduate student experience even stronger!
—
Aminah Amjad
President, Graduate Student Association
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Dear CAHSS Graduate Students, It’s time to elect your representatives for the Graduate Student Association Spring Semester-2026! The CAHSS Senator elections are now open, and we invite you...
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