Guidance on Subtitling

Summary

Employees at Stockholm University, hereafter referred to as the University, have stated that they are creating fewer films because of the DOS Act's accessibility requirements for subtitling. This is an unfortunate consequence of the law and not something it was intending.

Therefore, the Accessibility Node has produced this guidance for videos published on the University's internal and external websites, in the Athena education platform and other relevant systems.

The guidance in brief

• It is important that the number of films published is not reduced due to legal requirements for subtitling
• Films published by Stockholm University should be subtitled whenever possible
• Subtitling should preferably be of high quality. However, when this is not feasible for various reasons, automatic subtitling should be used, even if it means lower quality subtitle
• Where students with a specific need for high quality subtitles make a request, this should be accommodated as far as possible.

This guidance is not a practical guide, but rather a general approach. It mainly concerns those who are responsible for deciding whether to create, publish or subtitle a film. For example, managers, communicators, teachers, directors of studies and similar roles.

Backgroud to the guidance

The University's goal is to have as many films as possible subtitled with high quality, which is in line with the specific subtitling requirements of the WCAG accessibility guidelines and the Digital Public Service Accessibility Act (DOS Act).

It is known that some staff members ‘solve’ the subtitling requirement by creating and publishing fewer films. This is particularly true for longer films that relatively few people will see, such as recorded lectures.

High-quality subtitling is a resource-intensive activity. A reasonable estimate is that it takes at least three hours to subtitle one hour of video material, even if you streamline the process by starting from an automated captioning base. If staff use the University's Tal-till-text (speech-to-text) service, it costs around 2,700 kronor to create high-quality subtitles for one hour of video material.

It is understandable that in some cases, staff and managers may find it too resource-intensive to provide high-quality subtitling, especially for films that few are expected to watch. But the fact that this leads to the avoidance of film as an information channel is problematic:

• The University sees the value in creating and publishing films, so that students, staff and external users have the opportunity to access information via film material. The requirement for subtitling should therefore not be a reason to avoid creating or publishing a film.
• The main focus should be on high quality subtitling. The proportion of films subtitled with high quality should increase year by year.
• There there are no resources to subtitle films with high quality, films should still be created and published.
• Where high-quality subtitling is not feasible, automatic subtitling should be used, even if it means lower quality subtitles.
• The University should continuously evaluate the quality of our automatic subtitling services and ensure that the services provided are of a high standard in this area. There are many developments in artificial intelligence (AI) that mean that the quality of different automatic subtitling services varies considerably at the moment.
• Employees who create and publish films should have expertise in the tools and subtitling tools and providers that are available. Lack of expertise should not be a reason for not creating subtitles.
• When students with a specific need for high quality subtitles make a request, this should be accommodated as far as possible.
  

Contact

If you have any questions or reactions to this guidance, please do not hesitate to contact: webbtillganglighet@su.se