Blackboard Collaborate Ultra includes the ability for live closed subtitling. This provides an accessible learning experience for hearing-impaired attendees or attendees with a different native language than the active moderator or presenter.

Moderators should assign subtitlers as assistants. These people write what is being said during a session, so that the other attendees can see what is being written in real time. There can be several people subtitling at the same time for several languages.

The subtitles that are entered during the live session are also included in the recording of the session.

If our session had more than one subtitle track, only the first available one will be captured.

Being a subtitler

As a subtitler, subtitles can be written in the session so that they are visible to the rest of the attendees. This is a role (captioner) that is assigned by the moderator of the session.

There can be more than one subtitler in a session. Subtitlers are identified in the Attendees panel with a Closed Captioning (CC) icon next to them.

Live closed captioning is not supported in Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean. Users with browsers set to these languages will get an error when starting.

1. After a moderator assigns us the role of subtitler, the message "You can now provide subtitles for others in this session" will appear at the top of the page.
2. We will press the space bar or select the "Let's get started" button providing captions for the viewers, which is displayed with the text "Let's get started".
3. After selecting the subtitles, the edit field "Provide subtitles for the viewers" comes into focus with the placeholder text 'Write subtitles'.
4. We can now write the subtitles in the edit field.

Once we start providing subtitles, all attendees will be notified that subtitles are available. The captions will appear on their screens while we type them in real time.

By default, our name is used as the caption title. It is advisable to change the title to something that others will recognise when they see the subtitles. For i. e. 'subtitles' or 'Spanish subtitles'.

1. Click on your name in the top right-hand corner of the subtitle editing field.
2. Press the space bar or select the Edit subtitle title button: [our guest name].
3. Delete our name.
4. We will type a new title in the edit field "Type a new name for the subtitles. Press Enter to update the change or Escape to cancel" with the placeholder text Type subtitle title.
5. Press Enter to update.
6. The edit field "Provide subtitles for viewers" with the placeholder text Type subtitles will come into focus.

View subtitles

Once the subtitler accepts the role, the message "Closed captions are available for this session. Do you want to use them?" will be displayed at the top of the page.

1. To view the subtitles, press the space bar or select the Yes, enable closed captioning button, which is displayed as Yes.
2. When Yes is selected, the [[caption stream title] closed caption edit field will be enabled in the centre of the bottom of the page.

To disable closed captioning, press the space bar or select the No thanks, continue without closed captioning button, shown as No thanks.

Changing the font size of subtitles

1. In the read-only subtitle edit field, we will go to the "Select font size for hidden subtitle text" selection field. The default option is Normal.
2. Press the space bar or select the "Select font size for hidden subtitle text" field.
3. Navigate to and select one of the following options:
   1. Very small
   2. Small
   3. Normal
   4. Large
   5. Very large
4. The font size and the size of the subtitle field adapt to the change.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean live subtitles and browsers

The live subtitle input process is not supported in browsers set to Chinese, Japanese and Korean. This means that what we type may not appear as we want it to. The assistants will see all the commands, not just the words.

Example: to type the Japanese word "河口", the captioner types "kakou", which appears as "kかkこう". These characters are manually converted to "河口". Assistants viewing the subtitles see the characters written and converted, which makes them difficult to understand.

How to record subtitles and chat transcripts

If the moderator has allowed downloads of session recordings, we can now download recordings and transcripts from the Recording menu of the recording player.

Open the Recording menu at the top left of the screen.

• Download the full recording
• Download subtitle transcripts
• Download chat transcripts

We can also download subtitles from the main Recordings list.

1. In Recordings, look for a recording with subtitles (CC).
2. Select the "Subtitle Options" menu and click on "Download subtitles".