Case Study: Inver Hills Community College achieves seamless, 100% accurate open captioning and improved accessibility with D2L Brightspace

Open Captioning for Video Content Improves Accessibility and Efficiency

Inver Hills Community College, a Minnesota postsecondary institution serving about 5,500 students, aimed to improve accessibility for diverse learning styles and hidden disabilities and to better understand how open captioning of video content would affect student performance.

The college integrated Kaltura, Automatic Sync Technologies’ CaptionSync, and the Brightspace LMS to caption course videos; 56 videos were open-captioned with 100% accuracy and a three-day turnaround. The implementation was seamless, increased student satisfaction and accessibility, inspired further research (including an EdD dissertation), and prompted wider conversations about sustainable captioning funding—while an internal study found reduced video clicks and viewing time, suggesting greater efficiency though mixed effects on measured performance.

Inver Hills Community College

Rebecca Graetz

Instructional Designer