Madison College Libraries and Accessibility: Kanopy

Kanopy's Accessibility Statement

Kanopy is fully committed to making our own websites usable by all people, whatever their abilities or disabilities. Our filmmakers share important messages in their videos that we want viewed by as many people as possible.  

Kanopy’s New Gen Video Player

We are proud to launch our New Gen Player globally this week. Our New Gen Player has a variety of benefits to our users and has been designed to improve the accessibility of the platform.

Screen Readers

Kanopy's website and video player works with screen reader technologies on desktop browsers, as well as iOS and Android devices.  For those not familiar with screen reader technology, this enables users to use the keyboard, rather than the mouse, to control the video player and the experience. Users can move from component to component in the player using the tab key. The screen reader will read the component's text aloud or announce the component name. The user can control the component using the space bar or the arrow keys. Our player allows users to tab into the player from elsewhere on the web page or browser.

Keyboard Controls

The New Gen player can be controlled from the keyboard. The tab order to controls, and keys to manipulate the controls, are as follows:

Big play button: Press Space or Enter to play.
Play button in control bar: Press Space or Enter to toggle between play and pause.
Progress bar: Use up or right buttons to jump forward 5 seconds, use down or left buttons to jump back 5 seconds.
Full screen: Press Space or Enter to toggle between full screen and not full screen.
Volume slider: Use up or right buttons to increase volume, use down or left buttons to decrease volume.

Captions and Styling 

Captions can be launched on any video with a CC icon by clicking play on the player, then clicking the CC button. If users are viewing on a desktop or Android device, the appearance of the captions can be changed by clicking on "Captions Settings" on the CC button menu. Users will see an overlay that allows the following caption properties to be set:

Foreground color and opacity
Background color and opacity
Window color and opacity
Font size
Text edge style
Font family

Interactive Transcript Tool

An interactive transcript can be launched by clicking on "Transcript" underneath the player. The interactive transcript can be launched simultaneously or independently of the captions. Upon launching the transcript, the matching words in the transcript are underlined or highlighted. Users can search the transcript and navigate by clicking on any word in the transcript to jump to the corresponding time-code in the video. 

Caption Availability Commitment

Kanopy is committed to providing captions for all our videos. We are actively working with filmmakers to provide us caption files. If they are unable to do so, we are creating caption files on their behalf. If you are trying to access a video with no captions available, please email us immediately and we will make the captions available with 3-4 days. 

For Visually Impaired Users

Screen readers

Kanopy's website and video player works with screen reader technologies on desktop browsers, as well as iOS and Android devices. 

For those not familiar with screen reader technology, this enables users to use the keyboard, rather than the mouse, to control the video player and the experience. Users can move from component to component in the player using the tab key. The screen reader will read the component's text aloud or announce the component name. The user can control the component using the space bar or the arrow keys. Our player allows users to tab into the player from elsewhere on the web page or browser.

Keyboard navigation is supported for all browsers and our player allows users to tab into the player from elsewhere on the web page or browser.

We are currently in the process of making our site compliant with all Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Audio description

Kanopy's video player does not currently support audio description. We are working to upgrade our video player to support this, at which point we will be able to make audio described versions of films when available from our content partners. 

For Hearing Impaired Users

All films on Kanopy come with closed captions (or English subtitles for non-English titles) and transcripts (the scripts of the spoken words in the films) that are fully ADA compliant in accordance with our accessibility statement. 

Regarding accessibility for the hearing impaired, Kanopy delivers on this with:

1) Films with captions

The vast majority of films on Kanopy have. Users can easily activate the captions via a small "CC" button on the video player, that will permit them to turn on and off the captions at will. You can see further information on this here - how to turn on captions article.

A very small subset of films on Kanopy may have captions "burnt into" or integrated into the film itself, such that they are permanently on and cannot be turned off. This predominantly related to certain older foreign language films and silent films where the captions were integrated into the film itself in the day. If you have an issue with a film with burnt in captions, and would prefer interactive captions, please let us know at support@kanopy.com and we can help with this.

A small subset of films may not yet have the captions published on them yet in which case any user can simply place a "captions request". Films absent captions are typically films just recently launched and that the product team is in the process of getting captioning (launching over 30 films a day means we will sometimes launch the films whilst the captions are in development). For these films, users will see a button to the right of the film title with a "CC" struck through:

If the user clicks on this feature, they can then place their captions request through a request form: 

Once a request is received, the user will receive an instant response with a ticket that will allow them to communicate with Kanopy and track the progress of the captions upload. Kanopy will rush process the captions within 48 hours free of charge and notify the user once they are live.

2) Films with Transcripts

In addition to captions, Kanopy also provides full transcripts for films too. A "Transcript" button appears under the "More" tab below any film once it starts playing. The transcript is incredibly useful as you can search it for key words and if you click on any sentence in the transcript it will actually jump ahead and start playing the film where those words are being spoken.

Users can also use the transcript for the purposes of referencing in articles or papers as well.

3) User disability controls

Users also have the additional functionality on Kanopy to personalize the resource to their disability requirements. For example, a user can easily set up a profile on Kanopy and set their profile to have "captions enabled" on their user settings. This will mean that whenever they watch a film on Kanopy, it will always play with the captions automatically on. This is intended to give users with disabilities the optimal experience with our solution and minimize inconvenience.

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For information on how to use the captions and transcripts, see here.