Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2021 @ 3:23 PM The Parent & Family Fund is an annual fund-raising effort that has established a tradition of parent and family support at UCF. Every year the support from more than 2,000 families contributes to programs and enhances quality student services. Funding is allocated to programs and services that are of the most need given timely circumstances. At the start of the 2020 school year, there was a need to acknowledge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the expectation to serve the diverse UCF student population. An intrinsic portion of that diversity includes that of students with disabilities. Student Accessibility Services (SAS) works to create an immersive and inclusive environment for students with disabilities. With the remote environment that presented itself with the COVID-19 pandemic, there became an increased need to improve student’s accessibility to their academics. SAS, with funding from the Parent Family and Fund, introduced a new initiative. The goal: prioritize and increase captions for video content. “Transcripts provide access to videos, however at a reduced quality,” said Theda Llewelyn, Assistant Director of SAS. “Videos with proper captions have proven to be the best practice and create a more equitable experience for students.” According to the SAS Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Office Assistant, Allison Keefe, transcripts from videos and audio materials in courses were accommodated to deaf and hard of hearing students via email or Webcourses@UCF. Although helpful, transcripts aren’t the most accessible. The new initiative, led by Accessibility Consultant of SAS, Johanna Huerta, and supported by Graduate Assistant, Marcus Frazier, populates captions for existing videos and audio materials in Webcourses@UCF for a higher level of accessibility. As a grant recipient of the Parent & Family Fund, SAS was able to hire Marcus and produce the necessary captions for Webcourses@UCF. Over the years, the number of captions created for video and audio files has grown significantly under the Captioned Video accommodation. In the Fall 2020 semester, 2,019 captions were created, up from 227 in the Fall 2018 semester, and, as of March 4, 2021, with weeks to go in the semester, 1,738 captions were made in the Spring 2021 semester. Currently, those captions accommodated 40 deaf and hard of hearing students, although, as Huerta noted, the impact is difficult to measure and expected to be higher as students registered in the same classes benefit as well. “This work also provides academic benefits to UCF students in the same class who may have a learning disability, students where English isn’t their first language or any student who might miss a word here or there when watching a video,” Huerta said. “Numerous studies document that watching a video with captions improves a student with or without disabilities comprehension, attention and memory of the content of the video.” With the above benefits in mind, SAS envisages a future where the UCF campus is a fully accessible and inclusive environment for students with disabilities. “To do this, we all need to be proactive, [to] encourage faculty to select third party videos which are already properly captioned,” Huerta said. “As the courses become even more accessible and inclusive, students can stay focused on learning.” Students who are deaf or hard of hearing are encouraged, if they haven’t already done so, to schedule a Welcome Meeting with an SAS consultant to discuss what options are available to them. Further information can be found here: https://sas.sdes.ucf.edu/get-connected/. If you are interested in learning more about the Parent & Family Fund, its impact, and to support student programs, we encourage you to learn more here: https://www.ucffoundation.org/parent-family-fund. Back