I, like the rest of the world, spent much of the spring in the comfort of my home.  When the time came for a real-life-restaurant-visit, some friends and I donned our masks and planned for a night out. I had my husband put our name in with the hostess, knowing that with background noise, muffled speech quality and decreased visual access due to masks, I was at a serious disadvantage.  What I had not planned for was just how difficult it would be for me to converse with my friends.  I am accustomed to hearing these people speak, I know their body language, I am familiar with the cadence and rhythm within the conversations of this group.  I tried to fill in the gaps of language I was missing, but it was just too difficult.  Would you be surprised if I told you that my hearing is described as “within normal limits”?  This is why implementation of captioning is such an important piece to the Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

“In a study conducted in 2015  by the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP) Distance Learning Accessibility Committee, results indicated that 99% of all students reported that they found closed captions to be helpful when taking online classes. Only 7% of those students surveyed were deaf or hard of hearing.  The breakdown of the 99% indicated that  5% of those students responded that captions were slightly helpful, 10% felt captions were moderately helpful, 35% said captions were very helpful, and 49% found captions to be extremely helpful.” (Kmetz Morris & Brodosi, 2015). 

Here are some ways you can make this happen!

Kmetz Morris, Karla and Brodosi, David. (2015, November 5). Closed Captioning Matters: Enhancing Accessibility and Improving Learner Experience in Online Learning. Retrieved from Quality Matters.

  
Tai Botkin, Teacher for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing