YouTube
The Office of Communications maintains a flagship YouTube account. YouTube serves as the primary hosting tool for video that appears on the Harvard Chan School website. The Office of Communications and the Department of Information Technology have collaborated on best practices for making videos and distributing them on YouTube.
Branding
The Harvard Chan School brand includes specific fonts and colors. School-affiliated videos should use these styles in lower thirds and title cards.
The Harvard Chan School shield, logo, or brand mark may not be modified in any way without express approval from the Office of Communications.
Video accessibility: Captions and transcriptions
Harvard University policy requires that all videos on Harvard-affiliated, public-facing websites have closed captions. Additionally, videos on Harvard-affiliated YouTube channels must have closed captions.
Live streams of major School-wide events, such as graduation, must have live captioning. However, live-streamed events that are not major School-wide events, such as a departmental lecture, do not require live captioning. You must add captions or a transcript to your video after the event, even if it was live-streamed without live captions.
Transcripts and captions should be +99% accurate to comply with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations. Automated captions provided by YouTube, Zoom, or Facebook do not meet this standard. However, they can be a good starting point before you correct the captions manually.
To simplify the process, we recommend using the University-preferred vendor 3Play Media to generate transcripts and closed captions. All details (costs, how to get started, etc.) can be found on the IT Service Catalogue.
Release forms
Releases are required for all people featured in photos, videos, and podcasts made by Harvard Chan School. This release is for Harvard Chan School use only.
If you are capturing b-roll or crowd shots at an event, attendees should be notified that the event will be photographed/recorded. This notification can consist of a sign at the entry to an event and/or an announcement at the start of the program.
