Captioning on Live Events

Captioning is essential for hosting inclusive live events. Penn strongly recommends that all live events have auto-captions enabled and available to participants.

If captioning is requested, we need to provide the best type of captioning reasonably available. It doesn’t have to be live, although it is preferred.

In your event descriptions, we strongly encourage you to list the accessibility accommodations that you will provide, such as captioning.

Events that require registration or signup

There must be a way for attendees to request an accommodation. The easiest way to do this is to place a question into the registration form.

Sample language: If you require any accessibility accommodations, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please use this [text field, dropdown] to let us know what you need. Please note, we require at least [timeframe] notice. If you register within [timeframe] of this event, we won’t be able to secure the appropriate accommodations.

Even with the best intentions and planning, it is possible that you won’t be able to secure CART services. Because of the increase with distance learning, these types of vendors are under enormous bandwidth constraints.

Events that are free and open to the public

Because we cannot anticipate the needs of attendees in a public event, auto-captions at a minimum must be provided. We encourage you to secure a live captioner for events of high interest, such as commencement.

Accommodation requests

If you receive a request for captioning, try to procure a live captioner. If you are unable to secure a live captioner, whether due to vendor bandwidth issues or budget constraints, auto-captioning is acceptable. In this scenario, auto-captions are the best captioning reasonably available.