Relevant to: faculty, staff, and students
This article contains information considered accurate at the time of publishing. Technology updates, changes in University security practices, policies and procedures may effect the information in this article - updates to articles are scheduled on a periodic basis and will address any required changes.
What is CART and why is it important?
CART stands for Communication Access Real-Time Translation. It is also referred to as live captioning or real-time captioning. CART differs from the autogenerated captions you may be familiar with from Teams or Zoom. While the quality of autogenerated captions has undoubtedly improved over the years, it is still not considered accurate enough to provide effective communication access. Effective communication access is a requirement under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. There are a few different ways to provide CART; some services only utilize human captionists to generate captions in real-time, and others use a combination of AI and real-time editing by human captionists. Regardless, the important thing to remember is that accurate captions are needed to provide effective communication access.
When to provide CART
CART should always be provided if it is requested as a reasonable accommodation by a participant of a meeting or event. This includes internal or external participants. In addition, you should provide CART proactively, even if no one has requested it, for any internal or external meeting or event that is large in nature (such as commencement ceremonies, webinars, or conferences), and any event that is live streamed over the internet or open to the public. You do not need to provide CART for informal Teams meetings with colleagues or routine department meetings unless requested.
Examples of Meetings/Events that should offer CART
- Commencement ceremonies
- Webinars (internal and external)
- Conferences, such as the Annual Meeting and Fall Academic Conference
- Workshops
- Townhall meetings
- Student Info sessions
- Senate meetings
- Shared Governance meetings, such as governance committee meetings and regional governance meetings
- Synchronous course meetings
- Keynotes/guest speaker presentations
- Student Orientations and Jump Start sessions
- Interview presentations open to the entire university
Why provide CART proactively?
Why not only offer CART when it is requested by a participant as a reasonable accommodation? Offering CART proactively helps the university comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and our own Electronic Information Technology Accessibility (EITA) policy. In addition, consider the following reasons why you should provide CART regardless of request:
- Many people do not think to request CART because they have come to expect it at events, especially if they are public and/or live streamed.
- There are numerous barriers to formally disclosing disability and asking for a reasonable accommodation (stigma, lack of medical documentation, fear of denial of accommodation etc.).
- Many people benefit from CART, not just individuals who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. Other groups who may benefit include those with learning disabilities, ADHD, Autism, etc. Furthermore, many people without disabilities benefit from having live captioning during meetings and events.\
How to Request CART
You can request CART by using this Captioning Request Form. Select "Live Event CART Captions" for the requested service. Once you submit your request, it will require approval from Digital Accessibility. Please submit requests at least one week in advance of your event/meeting.
Setting up CART in Teams and Zoom Meetings
In Teams, the meeting organizer goes to meeting options > provide CART captioning > save, which generates a link that can be sent to a live transcriber. For meetings that have been set up by the organizer to have integrated live captioning in Teams, the live captioning will show up for everyone who has toggled on the closed captioning button (it will replace the auto generated captions). For more information, see Use CART Captions in a Teams Meeting.
In Zoom, the meeting host needs to invite the CART captioner to the meeting, then make them a co-host, and then assign them to type captions. For more information, see Zoom Closed Captioning.