29 U.S.C. § 701 (2018). A law that protects individuals with disabilities from discrimination by providing funding, resources, and establishing requirements with the intention to achieve equity for people with disabilities. This law applies to all agencies and programs that are associated with or regulated by the federal government, receive any federal funds, and all federal employment agencies, but each agency has specific requirements in addition to the universal federal standards.

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973

Under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, organizers of remote informational or educational events are required to provide access to audio for Deaf and hard of hearing individuals by ensuring that audio is visible. 

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, most American schools moved to an entirely virtual course model via the usage of video lectures. To comply with federal regulations for federally funded institutions, all lectures would need to be captioned. Since it would be too time and cost intensive to manually create captions for each lecture, automated captions are often used instead.

Usage of Automated Captioning in Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Ballenger, S. (2022). Access for deaf and hard of hearing individuals in informational and educational remote sessions. Assistive Technology Outcomes & Benefits, 16(2), 45-55. Retrieved from https://proxy.lib.umich.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/access-deaf-hard-hearing-individuals/docview/2712291965/se-2


Access for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Individuals in Informational and Educational Remote Sessions

Since many teachers may be technologically inexperienced, automated captions allow for these teachers to provide captions with their video. However, automated captions may lack punctuation and not emphasize certain words that the teacher wants students to remember. Additionally, many speakers often use body language, which is not transcribed by the automated captions.

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