Our new video emphasises that by turning on captions on audiovisual materials, teachers can help improve literacy and comprehension for Deaf and hearing impaired students, struggling readers, children with learning disabilities and ESL students, while benefiting all students.
Students, parents and teachers talk about their personal experiences of how captions have resulted in educational and social benefits. One year seven student said, “They really help a lot for me understanding what the movie’s about so if I have, like, questions on that topic, I’ll be able to answer it.”
Media Access Australia’s Education Strategy encompasses projects that progress from raising awareness of captioned educational materials amongst educators, to a practical model classroom for implementation in mainstream schools. These initiatives are supported by our Accessible Education Database, a catalogue of captioned educational titles, and the federally-funded Captioning Grant administered by Media Access Australia.
Our CAP THAT! campaign, promoting the use of captions in educational settings, will be launched mid-May to encourage teachers around Australia to ‘complete the classroom with captions’ during National Literacy and Numeracy Week (29 August – 4 September).
Media Access Australia CEO Alex Varley says, “The one area that is glaringly devoid of good captioning is the classroom, and of course the problem with that is it’s where everything starts. So the kids who are hearing impaired, we want to make sure they’re not disadvantaged from the word ‘go’.”
Watch the Captions – Essential for Learning video with captions or Captions – Essential for Learning with audio description on our YouTube channel.
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