erwinschrodingerofficial:

An open letter to my teachers: captions aren’t “distracting”, they’re a fucking necessity

With the rise of technology in classrooms, it’s pretty much impossible to get through a school day without having to watch an educational video. Here’s the thing though (@ teachers):

Captions are NOT a privilege! You’re not going out of your way or “doing me a favor”. Captions are a necessary support for some students.

(Important note: I am not Deaf or hearing impaired, and Deaf/hearing impaired students are far from the only ones who benefit from captions. Students with sensory issues may need to limit noise at times, and would only be able to watch videos with captions because of that. Students with a variety of learning disabilities may not be able to process auditory information as quickly as they process visual information, like me. And lastly, there are abled students who find they process information better when they read it instead of hear it! Point being, there are any number of reasons why a student might request for you to put captions on a video, but I guarantee you it’s never to cause a disruption.)

In my opinion, it’s pretty bad if you’re not enabling them automatically (putting students on the spot and opening them up to ridicule when they ask for the supports they need is not cool—better to provide the supports in the first place without being asked). But it’s even worse if a student asks for you to turn on the captions, and you don’t listen! And when you make up an excuse like “but captions are distracting!”, that is sending a message to disabled students’ that their needs are less important than the comfort of their abled counterparts.

The only acceptable excuse I can think of for not turning on captions is when the only available ones are auto generated. In which case… Do your job and check before showing the video, and if it doesn’t have captions, then be sure to provide your own captions and/or transcript for the video. And if you’re not going to take the time to do that, don’t show a video in the first place. Furthermore, NEVER assign a podcast/video to listen to for homework unless you know for a fact that there is a transcript or caption option available. A five minute video is a five minute assignment for most abled people. Without captions or transcripts, a five minute video can be a twenty minute assignment for disabled people.

Foreign language teachers: it’s even harder for students to process spoken language when it isn’t their first language, so enable foreign language captions. I understand that enabling English captions defeats the purpose, but at least enable captions in the language of the class.

Teachers, your ableist discomfort surrounding captions is contrary to what you should believe as a teacher. As a teacher, you should want to provide your students with every opportunity to succeed that you are capable of providing to them. Captions take an extra click of a mouse; they are not a burden. If you deny reasonable requests from students that will improve the quality of their learning simply on the basis of your preference, comfort, teaching style, etc., you’re just a bad teacher.