Customizing with UD Features: ULTimate CaptionWorks

Index

Overview

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1. Multiple Representations of Information

Captions can be added to video in any combination of text and images, augmenting or replacing the video's auditory elements.

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Use CaptionWorks to re-present the auditory elements of video in text, making the audio accessible to someone who cannot hear the dialogue or sound effects. These same captions can provide redundancy to those who may benefit from simultaneously hearing and reading a dialog track. Add visual elements such as speech bubbles to enhance meaning even further.

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2. Multiple Options for Expression and Control

Students can write directly on video, expressing their own ideas through text, images, and video.

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Writing on video provides a creative outlet for many students. Students can create dialog for an existing silent or talking movie or add a text track to their own video productions. As students express their ideas in written captions they have many opportunities to review, revise, re-read, discuss, and assess their writing.

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3. Multiple Options for Engagement

Teachers can caption videos in exciting and motivating ways to support and engage even the most reluctant readers.

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Clip art images or pictures drawn with the drawing tools in CaptionWorks allow users to create captions for beginning readers that combine text and images. Images can help define new vocabulary words; speech bubbles and other comic book-like elements can draw young readers in and support them as they connect the spoken and written words.

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Customizing Tips

• For students with visual impairments, create captions in the appropriate font, style, size, and color combination.
  
• For younger students, use speech bubbles to indicate that dialogue is occurring and to denote who is speaking at any one time.
  
• For students who have difficulty identifying or focusing on important visual elements, use the drawing tools to circle or point to these elements. Text labels can identify important segments in the video.
  
• For students using sign language, add pictures of signs to supplement their text or auditory equivalents.
  
• For a student for whom English is a second language, create captions in the student's first language. For the purposes of learning to read English, create a version of the same tape with English captions only. A tape could also be made with captions in both languages.

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Universal Design Wish List

• Add the ability to play QuickTime™ movies over the video so that a sign language interpreter can be used in place of or in addition to text captions.
  
• Include an on-screen scanning keyboard so students with physical impairments can write on videos along with their classmates.
  
• Add the capability to provide video image descriptions in a voice over so that videos can be made accessible to visually impaired as well as hearing impaired students.

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Feedback

How do you customize your students' learning with ULTimate CaptionWorks? We would like to add your ideas to our Web site, space permitting. (If we use your submission, we will give you credit.) Submit your Customizing Tips and UD Wish List items via e-mail to udfeedback@cast.org.

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Product Information

For more information about ULTimate CaptionWorks, see the Teaching Tools section of this Web site.

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Disclaimer

Although CAST created this product, we do not consider it to be fully universally designed. Universal design is a process that we too are learning. We include this product to illustrate some of its universally designed features as part of our educational purpose.

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