University of Illinois

Syracuse University and Indiana University, in collaboration with their university libraries and the Coulter Library of Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, seek to help make digital media collections in academic libraries more accessible to the deaf and hearing-impaired. The partners will design, implement, and evaluate an open source software platform to enhance the accessibility of digital media. The collaboration will 1) address the accessibility of audiovisual content by creating tools that provide cost-efficient captioning through Automatic Speech Recognition and crowdsourcing strategies; and 2) promote sharing and discovery of library resources by linking captioned videos with library collection catalogs. The project deliverables will be made available for use by academic libraries nationwide.