[Athen] CART alternatives

[Sebastian M Niles via athen-list]

Eileen

Ava is a bit different than Otter or Glean when it comes to cost. Ava is more pay-as-you-go while Otter or Glean usually require bulk purchases. With Glean, we're paying about $36.98 per seat. For Otter, it's about $97.35 a seat (totally worth it). I should note that these are discount prices that my university has negotiated with the companies. The cost is far greater otherwise. Ava charges for a subscription of about $14.99 a month with options to add other users to that account. That's the base account which would allow you to use the automatic transcription feature. If you wanted live captioning, you'd have to pay extra (about $4.99 for every hour after 40 minutes). While this does seem like the more financially feasible option, it can add up if you have many deaf/hard-of-hearing students at your university.

Most of these tools are pretty secure, but there is always a risk when you add student information to these services. We got around this with Ava by using an office account for all remote captioning sessions. This is not as feasible if you are making it the student's responsibility to use Ava for captioning though. As for what these services do with student information, we've been assured by all of them that they wouldn't sell student data. I can't guarantee that that is 100% true, but I'm choosing to believe these people.

I understand that faculty are concerned about recordings being taken out of context. But students can do that regardless of whether or not they have a recording tool like Otter or Glean. My university has students sign agreements saying they won't share recordings with anyone with the knowledge that doing so might get them in trouble with student judicial affairs. This has eased some professors worries. There are still some holdouts, but I always tell them that the drawbacks to that audio potentially being shared inappropriately are outweighed by the equitable outcomes for the students with these kinds of notetaking tools.

I think access offices have an easy time trying to explain the use of these tools to academic affairs. There is a proven equitable benefit for students with disabilities regardless of whether they use Otter, Glean, Ava, or some other tool. In the case of Ava, either deaf/hard-of-hearing students have captioning, or they don't and suffer for it. Academic affairs is good at recognizing compliance concerns on our campus. IT on the other hand is a bit more complicated. Our university has us complete vendor risk assessments, and sometimes these accessibility services don't meet full IT compliance requirements. However, Otter and Glean follow strict security protocols, which satisfies my university's IT department. I'm sure your IT department would be somewhat happy with them too. With Ava and similar tools, there is a struggle in getting IT approval. However, because this is a compliance issue, you might be able to convince IT to make exceptions in certain cases or have them work with these service providers to better tailor the product to the university's IT standards. There is only so much that these companies can do, but they are willing to work with university's to make sure that standards are met.

I hope this answers your questions.

Regards

Sebastian Niles, CPACC (he/him/his)
Accessible Technology Assistant
Student Disability Center
University of California-Davis
Davis, CA 95616

________________________________
From: Eileen Berger <eileenberger33 at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2025 6:19 AM
To: Sebastian M Niles <smniles at ucdavis.edu>; Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] CART alternatives

Hi Sebastion,
Can you share the cost differentials with AVA? or compare otter.ai<http://otter.ai> and Glean?
Besides costs, are there different types of privacy issues with these tools?
Additionally, faculty are worried that full transcripts/recordings of their classes will be taken out of context and/or shared inappropriately.
For students with disabilities and Access Offices, these tools do provide appropriate access.
How do Access Offices resolve these competing issues with IT and Academic Affairs and still provide student access and compliance?
Eileen Berger

On Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 11:46 AM Sebastian M Niles via athen-list <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>> wrote:
Hello Ione

My university has used remote captioners in the past, which can help fill the gaps for any students who needs human edited captions. We've also used Ava (https://www.ava.me/), which is a blend of human captioning and Otter style automatic captioning. Students can use the automatic captioning, and then request (or schedule) a human captioner for a class. The human edited captions requires more money though.

Sebastian Niles, CPACC (he/him/his)
Accessible Technology Assistant
Student Disability Center
University of California-Davis
Davis, CA 95616

________________________________
From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> on behalf of Ione Priest via athen-list <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2025 6:57 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Subject: [Athen] CART alternatives

Hello all,

We previously purchased a license for Otter.ai to provide a cheaper alternative to CART for a student (the student had experience with Otter for this purpose, so it was a good fit). However, our IT department is eager to eliminate Otter from our ecosystem due to security concerns and has asked that we explore other options in its stead. Are any of you using tools as an alternative to CART? If so, I'd greatly appreciate any insights you can offer!


Thanks,



Ione Priest (they/she) | Assistant Director of Accessibility Technology and Testing

CPACC, DHS Certified Trusted Tester

Access Center

Metropolitan State University of Denver

303-615-0200 (office)

www.msudenver.edu/access <http://www.msudenver.edu/access>



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