All films on Kanopy come with closed captions (or English subtitles for non-English titles) and transcripts (the scripts of the spoken words in the films) that are fully ADA compliant in accordance with our accessibility statement.
Regarding accessibility for the hearing impaired, Kanopy delivers on this with:
1) Films with captions
All films on Kanopy are provided for with subtitles / captions. Users can easily activate the captions via a small "CC" button on the video player, that will permit them to turn on and off the captions at will. You can see further information on this here - how to turn on captions article.
A very small subset of films on Kanopy may have captions "burnt into" or integrated into the film itself, such that they are permanently on and cannot be turned off. This predominantly relates to certain older foreign language films and silent films where the captions are integrated into the film itself. If you have an issue with a film with burnt in captions, please contact your account representative or Kanopy support to assist.
Note - a small subset of films may not yet have the captions published on them yet. These are most typically new release films, where the film is launched and the captions are in the process of being manually created by the publishing team (we launch upwards of 20 films per day). If you find such a film, you can place a simple "captions request" to get the captions rush processed. You will see a button to the right of the film title with a "CC" struck through:
If you click on this feature, you (or any user) can then complete a captions request form:
Once a request is received, the user will receive an instant response with a ticket that will allow them to communicate with Kanopy and track the progress of the captions upload. Kanopy will rush process the captions within 5 business days free of charge and notify the requester once they are live.
2) Films with Transcripts
In addition to captions, Kanopy also provides full transcripts for films too. A "Transcript" button appears under the "More" tab below any film once it starts playing. The transcript is incredibly useful as you can search it for key words and if you click on any sentence in the transcript it will actually jump ahead and start playing the film where those words are being spoken.
Users can also use the transcript for the purposes of referencing in articles or papers as well, and access citations to support references.
3) User disability controls
Users also have the additional functionality on Kanopy to personalize the resource to their disability requirements. For example, a user can easily set up a profile on Kanopy and set their profile to have "captions enabled" on their user settings in the iOS and Android apps. This will mean that whenever they watch a film on Kanopy, it will always play with the captions automatically on. This is intended to give users with disabilities the optimal experience with our solution and minimize inconvenience.
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For information on how to use the captions and transcripts, see here.
Please note that equally important to being compatible for hearing-impaired users, Kanopy's website is also fully compatible for visually-impaired users. You can see more information on our accessibility for visually impaired users here.