[Athen] Fw: [ITACCESS] Missing Captions on Videos in Canvas

[Laura Hamrick]

Thanks Amy for the suggestion of submitting feedback -- I hope YouTube fixes this issue soon.

If anyone needs a short-term workaround, I just wanted to point out that you can display captions using Amara.org’s embedded player as a substitute for the YouTube embedded player. The only caveat is that you need to have a copy of the video’s caption file that you can upload to Amara’s website, so this is problematic if you don’t own the video.

Detailed steps:

  1.  Log into your Amara.org account (or create one).
  2.  Go to “Subtitle Video<http://amara.org/en/videos/create/>”.
  3.  Enter the YouTube URL you want to use, click “Begin”.
  4.  On the left side of the page that loads for the video, click the “Upload them directly” link to upload your .srt file. (If you’re lucky, there will be a “Languages” section that says “English”, which means that someone has already uploaded English captions for that particular video.)
  5.  Once that is done, click “Get Embed Code” next to the “Language” header in that left sidebar.
  6.  Paste that code into your HTML to replace the YouTube embed code.

Best,
Laura


--
Laura Hamrick
Captioning and Accessibility Coordinator
Office of Information Technology
University of Colorado Boulder
laura.r.hamrick at colorado.edu<mailto:laura.r.hamrick at colorado.edu>
(303) 735-5782



From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu> on behalf of "Rovner, Amy" <arovner at shoreline.edu>
Reply-To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Date: Wednesday, June 14, 2017 at 2:42 PM
To: Promoting Accessible IT in Higher Education <accessibleit at u.washington.edu>, Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] Fw: [ITACCESS] Missing Captions on Videos in Canvas


Hello All,



Wanted to spread this news far and wide in the hopes of putting massive pressure on YouTube to fix the issue.



Short story - YouTube made an update yesterday that broke the ability for captions to be viewed on any embedded videos.  As a result they are not showing on videos in our Canvas classrooms (and it's finals week here!), captions are not showing up on all of our public-facing videos on our college website and elsewhere.



This is a HUGE accessibility issue.  When I checked earlier today, it hadn't made it onto their list of "Known Issues."  It's bit tough to reach a human at YouTube but I did send them a note on their "Provide Feedback" link at the bottom of most pages.  There is a bit of chatter on stack overflow.com (as you can see in the message below) but nothing elsewhere that I could find.



I want to make sure they are aware of the issue, its implications about accessibility and how it should be their #1 priority to fix but I think they need to hear from more a11y's.  Can you chime in?



Thanks in advance,



Amy


Amy Rovner, MPH RD
Accessible IT Coordinator
eLearning Instructional Designer
Associate Faculty Nutrition
Shoreline Community College

________________________________
From: The EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group Listserv <ITACCESS at LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> on behalf of Art Morgan <000000147f6d97a2-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2017 4:32 PM
To: ITACCESS at LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [ITACCESS] Missing Captions on Videos in Canvas


It looks like YouTube re-introduced a bug in their player yesterday, when updating their iframe Player API.  See:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44527024/youtube-subtitles-not-showing-for-embeded-video-even-the-button-is-missing
[https://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/stackoverflow/img/apple-touch-icon@2.png?v=73d79a89bded]<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44527024/youtube-subtitles-not-showing-for-embeded-video-even-the-button-is-missing>

Youtube subtitles not showing for embeded video - even the button is missing<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44527024/youtube-subtitles-not-showing-for-embeded-video-even-the-button-is-missing>
stackoverflow.com
For all videos with subtitles are missing (even the button) when you embed the video in iframe (directly or by API) The google-example: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/171780?hl=en If you



They will probably fix it eventually, but this is one of the hazards of using YouTube; they are constantly changing their APIs, and their developers and QA team don't always have accessibility (or usability) top-of-mind. If it's any consolation, it looks like this is happening with all YouTube embeds, not just on Canvas, so they are probably hearing a lot of screaming right now from accessibility-minded folks.

No video player is perfect, but if you care about accessibility this is another example of why to use video players that are designed for accessibility, like the CaptionSync Smart Player<http://www.automaticsync.com/captionsync/captioning-tools/captionsync-smart-player/>, or the Able Player<http://ableplayer.github.io/ableplayer/>.

Art

Art Morgan

art at automaticsync.com<mailto:art at automaticsync.com>

Automatic Sync Technologies

www.automaticsync.com<http://www.automaticsync.com>

1-877-AST-SYNC

direct: 1-877-278-7962 ext. 717
On 6/13/17 2:42 PM, Pope, Stephanie wrote:
Hello Everyone,

We are having an issue with captions being an option on videos embedded within Canvas. Has anyone heard anything about this issue? All we know is based on a thread in the community about Missing Captions<https://community.canvaslms.com/thread/8277>. Does anyone have any other information?

Thanks for any information,

Stephanie Pope
Instructional Media Accessibility Consultant
Universal Design Center
Department of Academic Resources and Planning
California State University, Northridge
stephanie.pope at csun.edu<mailto:stephanie.pope at csun.edu> | 818.677.4430
********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/discuss.

********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/discuss.
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