Human Captioning

Online Learning & Educational Technology (OLET)
Join us online every week for drop-in sessions:
Tuesdays 10:30-11 am, Wednesdays 2-3 pm, and Thursdays 1-3 pm

Welcome to our weekly BLOG: The Moodle Newdle. We’ll introduce you to some new Moodle features, as well as explore some of those you might have missed or forgotten.

All course materials must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), CCC Instructional and Student Services Polices and Procedures (ISP) 151 Course Modalities Policy, and—at a minimum—must be auto-captioned.

Automated, machine-generated captions are fast, simple, and reasonably accurate (about 75-85%), but they may struggle with acronyms and industry-specific terminology. However, these captions can be edited relatively easily, which may be the quickest option for you as the subject-matter expert (SME).

Keep in mind that accommodation requests from the Disability Resource Center (DRC) require 100% accuracy, so you’ll need to either manually edit (as needed) machine-generated captions or request human captions.

So how do human captions compare? Human captions offer higher accuracy and context awareness. Specifically, humans can:

• accurately interpret homophones (words that sound alike but have different meanings)
• correctly capture industry-specific language, acronyms, and terminology
• understand and transcribe thick or unfamiliar accents
• identify who is speaking and include relevant non-speech elements (such as sound effects)
• convey tone, emphasis, and emotional nuance
• appropriately handle idioms and cultural references

Ultimately, caption accuracy is essential. Poor captions aren’t just frustrating—they’re exclusionary, especially for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Overlooking caption quality risks alienating the very people your accessibility efforts are meant to include.

Written by: DW Wood | Posted on: April 10, 2026 | View all