Beyond Outsourcing Accessibility: Vendor Research and a Scalable, In-House Video Compliance Model

As video use expands across higher education, institutions face growing pressure to meet digital accessibility requirements—particularly for captions and transcripts—while managing rising costs. For smaller institutions, third-party captioning services often appear to be the easiest solution, despite limited scrutiny of accuracy claims, quality controls, and long-term financial impact. This session presents a dual-focused case study. First, it shares original institutional research evaluating several widely used captioning vendors against core accessibility and compliance criteria. The findings reveal meaningful performance differences and challenge common assumptions about vendor-provided captions. Second, the session demonstrates how one institution used these findings to justify and implement a scalable, in-house video accessibility workflow using technologies it already owned. By integrating existing tools with internal quality review processes, the institution achieved resilient, WCAG-aligned conformance while avoiding vendor costs projected to reach millions of dollars over time. Attendees will gain evidence-based guidance for evaluating captioning vendors, identifying when outsourcing introduces risk, and designing sustainable accessibility strategies that balance compliance obligations with fiscal stewardship.