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Video Policy

All videos that are posted on the University of Michigan-Dearborn website must be hosted on the UM-Dearborn YouTube Channel. The university maintains a single YouTube channel campus-wide and additional YouTube channels using the UM-Dearborn name are not permitted. Videos created for university use that require hosting on YouTube for sharing in emails, social media or similar forms should be uploaded to the official UM-Dearborn YouTube channel.

Upload Process

The External Relations team manages the video upload process. To have your video added to the UM-Dearborn YouTube channel, please complete the Video Upload Form. Please note that most requests will be fulfilled within 3-5 business days, so please plan accordingly. Your video should be the final edited version and accessible to our team for downloading. All video titles, descriptions, thumbnail art and playlist requests should be included on the form. The University of Michigan’s Accessibility Policy requires captions to be available for any video uploaded by our organization. See below for options on providing a transcript or caption file.

Content Policy

UM-Dearborn does not post any content to YouTube that could be flagged as violating their community guidelines such as nudity, sexual content, excessive profanity, etc. as it could result in the termination of our account. YouTube's full community guidelines can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/community-guidelines/

Caption Policy


Uploading your video with captions is required by federal regulations, University of Michigan policy, and is a best practice for video design. Captions are important because they help provide access to your video content for individuals with hearing impairments in compliance with federal regulations, University of Michigan policy, and best practices for video design. Captions can also be useful for those that are not fluent in the native language of the audio or video.

Consider the following options:

  • Professional captions. A professional captioning service should be considered when your video contains important information meant for a broad audience, but is too long for you to provide your own captions and no transcript is available. The cost will vary depending on the length of the video. A shortcode should be provided when requesting this option.

  • Provide your own captions. If you recorded via Zoom and turned on the transcript option, the transcript can be used to generate captions on YouTube. Please note you will need to first edit these captions to correct any errors and words not captured by Zoom. If you wrote a script for your video, that can also be used to generate captions. Many video programs will also generate a caption file. We can take edited caption files in .vtt or .srt formats, or you may provide the text in a document file such as Google Docs or Word.

  • Auto-captions. YouTube will generate this in most cases. The accuracy is not high quality, so these captions will need to be edited prior to a video going public. If the video is under 10 minutes, you may submit your video without captions and then provide an edited version at a later date. If you are generating auto-captions via a Zoom transcript or other third part tool, you must also edit these; we cannot use auto-captions that haven't been reviewed or edited.

Captioning Services

There are numerous captioning services (Automatic Sync Technologies, Casting Words, 3-Play Media, and Tech Synergy are a few) that will caption your video for a small fee. If an external captioning service is required you will be asked to provide a shortcode prior to your video being sent out for captioning. Once the caption file is received it can be added to your video (typically a few days after sending the video out for captioning).

Lecture Captions

There is no formal policy for faculty lecture captions. The university video system integrated into Canvas (Kaltura) has captioning abilities built in and it can generate captions at no charge. This mechanical service only has an accuracy rate of 75% and extra time is required to correct captions. Faculty are encouraged to include captions, however it is only necessary when there is an accommodation request from Disability and Accessibility Services. For additional questions regarding faculty lecture captioning, review the Instructors and Admin Support webpage or contact Chris Casey, university coordinator of digital education, 313-593-3504 or chriscas@umich.edu.

 

Policy owned by: External Relations

Last reviewed: 2/2023

Next review: 6/2024