Introduction

Who: Captions (also called “intralingual subtitles”) provide content to people who

are Deaf and others who cannot hear the audio. They are also used by people who
process written information better than audio.

What: Captions are a text version of the speech and non-speech audio information
needed to understand the content. They are displayed within the media player and
are synchronized with the audio.

Most are “closed captions” that can be hidden or shown by people watching the
video. They can be “open captions” that are always displayed and cannot be turned
off.

Captions and Subtitles

The terms “captions” and “subtitles” are used for the same thing in different
regions of the world. This resource uses:

 Captions for the same language as the spoken audio.

 Subtitles for spoken audio translated into another language.

Some regions use subtitles for both the same language as the audio and for the
translation. Sometimes they are distinguished as intralingual subtitles (same
language) and interlingual subtitles (different language).

Subtitles are implemented the same way as captions. Subtitles/interlingual

subtitles are usually only the spoken audio (for people who can hear the audio but
do not know the spoken language). They can be a translation of the caption
content, including non-speech audio information.

Captions are needed for accessibility, whereas subtitles in other languages are not
directly an accessibility accommodation.
Live Captions

Live captions are usually done by professional real-time captioners or

Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) providers. Live captions can be
done in-person or remotely. That is, the person doing the captioning/CART does
not have to be at the same location as the live action; they can be doing the live
captions by listening to the audio over a phone or Internet connection.

If you have live captions and you post a recording, you will probably need to do
minor editing for accuracy.

This rest of this page addresses developing captions for pre-recorded media.

Interactive Transcripts from Captions

Caption files are used by some media players to provide interactive transcripts.

Interactive transcripts highlight text phrases as they are spoken. Users can select
text in the transcript and go to that point in the video. Some players provide
interactive transcript functionality.