This document discusses automatic transcripts and their use at the University College of Estate Management (UCEM). It provides background on accessibility legislation and guidelines. UCEM conducted research on 6 automatic transcription software packages, finding varying accuracy rates. A new webinar platform with automatic transcripts was introduced, with student and tutor feedback surveys finding 52.7% of students used the transcripts and 80% found them useful, especially for non-native English speakers. Students use transcripts for searching, note-taking, and accessibility reasons. Limitations include accuracy and responsibility for error corrections.

1. ©UCEM
Automatic Transcripts
Student and Tutor Views
Dr Tharindu Liyanagunawardena

2. ©UCEM
Plan
• Background
• Accessibility
• University College of Estate Management
• Our Research
• How Students Use Transcripts
• Limitations and looking ahead

3. ©UCEM
Begin programming: Build your first mobile game

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Accessibility
• The quality of being easily reached, entered, or
used by people who have a disability
- Oxford Living Dictionary
• Digital Accessibility
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
- Levels: A, AA, AAA
- Version 2.2 (First Public Working Draft 27 February 2020)

5. ©UCEM
Accessibility Legislations
• EU Accessibility Directive
• New UK Regulations on Accessibility for Public Sector Bodies (2018)
• Requires to comply to WCAG 2.1 AA standard
• Accessible VLEs – Making the most of the new regulations
• The right thing to do
• What stops us from doing the right thing?
• Case of University of California Berkeley

6. ©UCEM
University College of Estate Management
 Established 1919
 Online delivery
 the leading provider of HE for construction, surveying and
real estate globally (HESA statistics 2015/16)
 provider of 10% of all degree apprenticeships in the UK*
*Source: FE Data Library "Apprenticeships level, framework and sector subject area
data tool: starts 2011/12 to 2016/17 reported to date"

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Accessibility Awareness
• Posters - Good practice for accessibility
• Screen savers
• Blog posts
• Workshops

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Previous work
• Increasing use of video
• Manual transcription  costly
• Recorded video  transcript and or captions provided
• Webinars  only as reasonable accommodation
• Automatic transcriptions with six software

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Results
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
2 3 4 5 6 7
Transcript number
Transcription Errors (per 1000 words)
Trint - Sonix - Descript - Watson - Zoom - Synonte -

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Findings
Property
Management
Construction
Management
Building Pathology
Property and
Contract Law
Expert 1 Expert 2 Expert 3 Expert 4 Expert 5 Expert 6 Expert 7
2 x x x x x x x
3 x x x x x x x
4 x
Good
enough
Good
enough
x
Good
enough
Good
enough
x
5 x
Good
enough
x
Almost
good
enough
x x x
6 x x x x x x x
7 x x x x x x x

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Learning
• Quality of recording matters
• In a technical discipline Word Error Rate may not be sufficient predictor
of quality
• Good starting point for creating a transcript as an accessibility aid
Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (2019). Automatic Transcription Software: Good Enough for Accessibility? A
Case Study from Built Environment Education. In A. Volungeviciene, & A. Szűcs (Eds.), EDEN 2019
Annual Conference: Connecting through Educational Technology to produce effective learning
environments (pp. 378-386). Budapest, Hungary: European Distance and ELearning Network.
Link to full paper: https://bit.ly/2wPz9AN

12. ©UCEM
New Webinar Platform
• Webinar platform  Zoom
• Automatic transcription  soon after recording
• Average accuracy 73.7%
• Student and tutor feedback survey
• Student responses – 283
• Tutor responses – 27

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Zoom Recorded Webinar

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Feedback: Have you used the audio transcript?
52.7
47.3
Yes No
Yes (52.7%) = 144

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Feedback: Are automatic transcripts useful?
N = 40
80%
14%
6%
Yes No OtherN = 130
104
95
5
Yes No
Non-native English Speakers
38

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Use of automatic transcripts: different views
So useful! Amazing. The search functionality is revolutionary. If I vaguely
remember something being said in the webinar but can't quite remember
where or when I used to have to watch almost the entire webinar again -
and it took so long to load. Now, I just type a word and everything comes
up. It's amazing. Ok, the audio transcript is not always spot on, but frankly
it's amazing how much it does pick up especially with different accents and
pronunciation of words and acronyms. Really love it.
As a non-native (English) speaker, it's great to understand the audio-
transcript.
No, poor quality transcription. Could confuse some students, especially those
for whom English isn't their first language.
yes, i am dyslexic and found it very useful when i needed to make notes and
couldnt remember

17. ©UCEM
How Students Use Transcripts
• Tool for searching within a video
• Transcript as notes
• As an accessibility aid
• Understand unfamiliar accents/words
• Speaker is too fast
• Study on the go (commuting, quiet environment)
• To catchup when distracted
• Compensate poor audio quality
• Smaller file to download
• Preference to read transcript
Findings are corroborated by previous studies (Linder, 2016)
Linder, K. (2016). Student uses and perceptions of closed captions and transcripts: Results
from a national study. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University https://bit.ly/2T1YQ9W

18. ©UCEM
Limitations and Looking Ahead
• Small study
• Not many participants with declared disabilities
• Novelty factor
• Should webinar hosts take responsibility to check
accuracy of automatic transcription?
• A mechanism to report transcription errors and correcting
them?
• What to say about accessibility?

19. ©UCEM
• Questions 
tharindu@ucem.ac.uk
@Tharindu__