How to Fix Missing Captions in Storyline 360

Overview

There are two related settings here, and doing one without the other still leaves learners with no access. Player Properties has a course-wide toggle that turns on captioning support, but that toggle alone doesn't create any captions. Each narrated slide needs its own transcript, and each embedded video needs its own caption file, added separately.

Step-by-step instructions

1. 1

   Go to Player Properties, then Captions, and confirm the feature is turned on course-wide.

2. 2

   For each slide with narration, check whether it has a transcript.

3. 3

   If not, add one as a text box (Insert, then Text Box) with the actual words spoken, not a summary.

4. 4

   For each embedded video, right-click it and choose Closed Captions.

5. 5

   Add a caption file to the video, this is separate from the course-wide Player Properties setting.

6. 6

   Give the video an accessible name the same way you would an image, right-click, Size and Position, Accessibility tab.

Screenshots

Tips

• Write transcripts as you write your narration script, not after, it's faster and you're less likely to summarize instead of transcribing.
• A transcript should be what was actually said, word for word, not a paraphrase.
• Keep videos short where you can, a 90-second video is much easier to caption accurately than a 10-minute one.

Common mistakes

• Turning on captioning in Player Properties and assuming that's the whole job, with no actual captions or transcript added to any slide.
• Assuming the course-wide captioning setting also covers embedded video, it doesn't, video needs its own caption file.
• Writing a transcript that's a rough summary instead of what was actually said.

Why it matters

Deaf and hard-of-hearing learners get nothing from narrated audio or video without captions or a transcript.