This service is available for faculty, staff, students, student clubs, and visitors
Assistive technologies can help make resources more available to individuals on campus.
ITS supports accessibility by following ADA guidelines and providing appropriate technologies to individuals through the Office of Disability Resources. Using accessible practices benefits everyone in your course, not just those who experience disabilities.
Creating accessible classrooms is all a part of St. Thomas's core value, "All for the Common Good." The following resources can help you make your materials accessible:
For individual accommodations, please contact the Office of Disability Resources.
Our consultations and accessibility support includes topics such as: courses, websites, video and streaming content, physical spaces (classrooms, meetings, etc.), documentation, training/advocacy, Zoom video closed captioning, best practices, and more.
Need your academic video content to be captioned?
Captioning video and multimedia is essential to meet ADA/Section508 requirements and is beneficial for all learners. Including captioning with video or audio course materials creates an inclusive, equal learning environment for learners with disabilities, and proactively addresses a diverse range of abilities and learning needs including students for whom English is a second language whose reading skills are often better than their spoken English skills, students with learning disabilities (some students with learning disabilities comprehend material better when they both see text and hear it spoken aloud) and students watching/listening in a noisy environment.
Before you begin...
Instructors will need to upload their video content to Panopto if it does not already live there. Once in Panopto, we will need a link to the Panopto folder or the links of the individual videos that you need captioned.
- Note: Currently, only videos that live on Panopto and YouTube can be captioned by the Accessibility Support Team.
- If an instructor uses a video that lives outside of Panopto or Youtube and is necessary to the course, we first recommend reaching out directly to the content owner with a request to have them either upload their content to YouTube, or allow for our team to send them a captioned transcript that they can upload to their video. Once you hear a response, submit a ticket using this form. If you do not get a response, and the video is necessary to the course, submit a ticket here and our team will discuss next steps.
Captioning YouTube Videos
If you need a video captioned from YouTube then submit the links using this form and we will order the captions. Once complete, we will transfer the YouTube videos to the video hosting site Amara and send you the new link.
- Accessibility Support can only caption content that was NOT created or uploaded by the instructor. If the content was created or uploaded by an instructor, then they will need to transfer the videos to Panopto.
Ally by Blackboard
Your class is full of diverse students with unique learning abilities. Providing them with more accessible original content means they can choose formats that work best for them: HTML for improved reading on mobile phones, Electronic Braille for the visually impaired, and Audio for learning on the go.
Ally automatically scans your original content, and performs a series of steps to make them more accessible.
Ally offers two features described below- Alternative Formats and Course Content Accessibility Checker. The Alternative Formats features is automatically enabled and you can choose to have the Course Content Accessibility Checker enabled as part of a Spring pilot program.
See Related Articles to the right for more information about Ally by Blackboard.
Getting Started
Faculty interested in developing accessible course content are encouraged to visit Digital Accessibility at the University of St. Thomas in OneStThomas.
ITS and STELAR also serve as consulting resources for departments. Use the request service form to get started.
Request Service
Our request service form will allow you to:
- Request video captioning for Panopto and YouTube videos
- Request a consultation
- Troubleshoot or report a problem