As part of the University of Alabama’s Technology Accessibility Initiative, the Center for Instructional Technology’s Technology Accessibility team administers grants to professionally caption and/or transcribe UA-owned video and audio and select UA-hosted live online events.
- Grants cannot be used for course materials or commercial content and do not replace or affect captioning services provided through the Office of Disability Services.
- Instructors and campus areas should ask for captioned versions of films or commercial content used in academic settings.
- UA Libraries has many captioned videos available in the Music Library and via video databases.
Public-facing/campus-wide video and audio
Grants may be used to professionally caption and/or transcribe video and audio that will be 1) shared publicly on behalf of the University of Alabama or one of its programs or 2) shared campus-wide or with an entire area (program, college, department).
The following criteria can be used to prioritize captioning efforts and use of grant funds:
- Are the videos public-facing or campus-wide?
- Are the videos informational or educational (as opposed to promotional)?
- Are the videos newly created?
- Are the videos frequently accessed?
- Does the campus area have funding available to captioning the videos? If so, contact us for information about discounted captioning services through our vendor.
To apply for a grant to caption public/campus-wide video and audio, contact accessibility@ua.edu.
Panopto recordings
Panopto captioning grants are available for UA-owned recordings hosted in Panopto, UA’s lecture capture and video hosting/streaming service.
All Panopto creators have the ability to add, edit, and download captions in Panopto. Typically, grants are reserved for professional captioning of recordings that will be reused by another course or section, or in a future semester. Grants are also more likely to be rewarded is the course has a large number of students.
Live captioning
Live captioning grants are available for UA-hosted campus wide or public-facing events where ODS or HR captioning services or accommodations are not applicable.
Grant requests are considered on a case-by-case basis and are limited based on available funds. To learn more, contact accessibility@ua.edu