Tools and Resources

Video and Audio Accessibility

• Accessibility and usability at Penn State: Caption guidelines: This website describes best practices for creating captions, transcripts, and alternative text in various systems.

• Able Player: This HTML5 media player was designed to be accessible across browsers.

• Amara: This platform can be used to create and crowdsource subtitles and translations.

• CADET (Caption and Description Editing Tool): This free software enables creation of caption files and audio description scripts.

• Described and Captioned Media Project (DCMP): Captioning key: This guide describes guidelines and best practices for captioning educational videos. It also links to accessibility vendors, tools, and studies.

• Stamford interactive’s guide to accessible video [PDF]: This chart summarizes considerations for making videos accessible, taking into account the file, the player, and alternative content.

• uiAccess: This website is a little out of date but provides links to transcription services for materials in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, and Turkish.

• WebAIM: Captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions: A summary of accessibility considerations for captioning, transcribing, and describing media.

• YouTube: This streaming service can automatically generate captions or sync captions when supplied with a transcript.

Image Accessibility

• Center for Online Learning, Research, and Service. University of Illinois, Springfield: Alt text examples: This resource provides examples that show how one author distinguished between captions and alt text.

• Cooper Hewitt guidelines for image description: These guidelines recommend inclusive practices for referencing gender, race, and ethnicity in image descriptions.

• CUNY: Accessibility toolkit for OER: Alternative text: This guide includes examples of short and long descriptions for images.

• Describing visual resources toolkit: This kit is designed to support authors, editors, publishers, and arts organizations in incorporating accessibility practices in visual description.

• Diagram Center: Accessible image sample book: This book provides a series of sample diagrams and images and discussions about how to write good alternative text for each.

• National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM): Guidelines for describing STEM images: NCAM recommends practices for describing STEM images including brevity, clarity, narrative description, and navigation control.

• Poet Training Tool: A website that discusses when and how to describe a variety of image types and provides opportunities to practice writing alt text.

• WebAIM: Alt text blunders: Discusses common mistakes made in writing alternative text for images.