Editor’s note: The university calls for accessibility in online resources including videos. Here’s an example of how one unit is moving toward accomplishing that goal.

The School of Dentistry has taken an important step to make its digital videos on the Internet more accessible to the hard-of-hearing and visually impaired. Recently 30 of the most-watched videos were transcribed and uploaded to www.youtube.com/user/umichdent. To date, the videos have been viewed more than 1.5 million times worldwide.

The effort began when Mary Reilly, the assistant coordinator of services for deaf and hard-of-hearing students at U-M, approached the School of Dentistry last summer volunteering to transcribe some of the videos. “I read an article on the school’s website about the videos being available on YouTube that were drawing worldwide interest, but realized none of them were captioned,” she says. 

Working with Emily Springfield, the School of Dentistry’s instructional designer, Reilly volunteered because she had more time during the summer and wanted to work on the project “to keep my transcription skills sharp. Since these are educational videos, this project fit nicely with my job description.”

Reilly added she was surprised to learn that more than 800 videos were produced during the past 40 years. “I don’t know of another institution that has a similar library of educational media,” she says. “In that respect, the School of Dentistry’s video library is unique.”

Drawing on her experiences with deaf and hard-of-hearing students at U-M, Reilly says adding captions “would be very helpful, not only to them but also to people for whom English is not their first language.”

Transcribing offered another benefit. Since the school’s videos are on the Web, content from the transcripts would be easily searchable, which will lead to increased viewership, Reilly says.

However, transcribing is time intensive. An experienced transcriptionist can process about 10 minutes of video in an hour. Computer transcribing, Springfield says, also is available, but currently is about 75 percent accurate. “Most transcribing mistakes happen with dentistry-specific terminology, arguably the most important part of the transcript,” she says. “Making sure remarks are accurate and that anatomical terms are correctly spelled, for example, often takes as long or longer than transcribing itself.” 

Reilly says transcription accuracy is crucial. “Captions have to be between 95 to 99 percent accurate for a reader to understand them,” she says. “If a transcript is less than 95 percent accurate, comprehension declines to a point where what is being communicated becomes unintelligible.”

Springfield said that transcripts also could be a steppingstone for eventually translating the videos into other languages. “Since 75 percent of the video viewers are outside the U.S., translation is a logical next step,” she says.

Others who may be interested in transcribing or translating the videos are invited to contact the School of Dentistry by e-mail: open-dentistry@umich.edu.