Remind me again, what are audio descriptions and why are we talking about them?
Audio descriptions are a verbal descriptions of what’s happening on screen in any video. They’re being required for all universities starting April ’26 and schools aren’t ready. You can read more about that initial info in this blog post.
Why would student work require audio descriptions?
You may think…wait…we’re not producing those student videos. Why would we be required to make them accessible? This may sound true on its surface, but if we’re requiring any sort of media in order for a student to complete their class work then we are backing the student in to a corner where their inability to consume that content becomes a blocker to their education.
This is, unfortunately, getting worse as more schools switch to multimedia assessments as a better way to assess knowledge in a world where AI can write the essay for the students.
Imagine a scenario where an instructor in a communication class sets up a peer review assignment where students are critiquing each other’s presentations as given? Now imagine those slides contain info that the student isn’t describing as they present? It’s impossible for a visually impaired student to participate in that activity.
What do we do about student work then?
If you’re using Harmonize? You’ll just check the box on the assignment that says “use ai to audio describe videos” and then chill. (Sorry, couldn’t help the not-so-subtle sales pitch).
If you’re not, you have a few options that can help make it somewhat better.
- Include a rubric item that requires students to describe visuals as they present as this benefits all students and creates a more clear presentation. Make sure you provide examples of how to do this for your students.
- Professionally offer a quick turnaround of audio descriptions with a 3rd party describing service. This is obviously hard due to limited timeline on assignments.
- Offer an alternate way for the student to participate that achieves the same learning goals (sometimes impossible and hard to not single out the student with the disability)
- Ignore this problem and focus on instructor content and hope (not great, but realistically what we think will happen).
Why are you telling me this?
We’re on a mission to raise awareness of inequity problem in the classroom. We don’t actually expect universities to attack this part of the problem because it’s prohibitively expensive unless all other ed tech tools step up and offer to describe student videos. Our hope is that it helps drive home how important it is to AT LEAST handle the instructor content.
What we don’t want you to do?
Don’t give up on video. Online classes are already suffering engagement problems and instructional content and student exercises that leverage multimedia are GREAT. So fight the good fight!
