Live Human Captioning provides real-time captioning of live speech and is another essential component of communication at your event or programming. 

Live Human Captioning (CC)

Ask Yourself

• How are you providing access to verbal communication for those who may be Deaf, Hard of Hearing, or who might process better by being able to read material?

Recommended Practices

The University has two vendors who can provide captioning content for Zoom, Webinars, Live streaming events, and for events and classes big or small.  

There are typically three types of Live Human Captioning:

1. CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) (verbatim)
2. C-Print® (meaning-for-meaning)
3. TypeWell (meaning-for-meaning)

Typically in higher education one will request CART because it is verbatim captioning. Do expect that the captions will have a small lag (3-5 seconds) behind the speaker.

Iowa is proud of its commitment to accessibility for faculty, staff, students, and all audiences who might read or view content on digital platforms. Iowa requires that all public-facing videos or live streams (including Facebook Live events) produced by the university include closed captioning. (For the purpose of this document, public-facing is defined as content that is available to audiences outside the university. It does not include academic or course material content.) All campus groups producing public-facing video media must ensure that the video is accessible to the deaf or hard of hearing, as is required by law (within the Americans with Disabilities Act) and according to university policy. All university web resources are required to follow the IT accessibility policy. Visit Information Technology Services’ IT accessibility page to learn more about captioning and other topics related to IT accessibility. 

Scheduling a Captionist

For events the individual department/unit/organization is responsible for procuring the captionist; reach out to our University vendors and provide:

• Onsite contact name and contact information 
• Date, start and end time of the event 
• Location: either Zoom event link or room and address of the location on campus
• Invoice information such as an P-card number or PO number
• Any information regarding the event that might help the captionist/interpreter prepare including names, technical terminology, and slides of presentations if available. These materials can be provided closer to the event start date.

University Vendors for Live Human Captioning:

1. 2020 Captioning (Links to an external site.), Chris Hopkins, 2020office@2020captioning.com

2. Verbit (Links to an external site.), Daniel Cruz, daniel.cruz@verbit.ai

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Captions

For Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) captions see the Virtual Events Captioning section of this guide. 

The Office of Strategic Communications’ full statement on closed captioning (Links to an external site.) 

IT Accessibility guidelines on captioning visit (Links to an external site.)

IT Accessibility guidelines on campus capturing priorities (Links to an external site.)