Captions and text transcripts are essential components of web accessibility. They promote inclusivity and ensure that everyone can access and understand the content provided on a website, regardless of their abilities or disabilities.
- Open captions are always on and cannot be adjusted or turned off.
- Closed captions can be turned on and off as desired and can be used to translate content between different languages.
- Captions need to be accurate and identify the speaker and important sounds relative to the context of the video.
- Live content can have small inaccuracies, but recorded content needs to be proofread and corrected.
- Text transcripts are required for pre-recorded audio-only or video-only content and need to be accurate, keyboard accessible, and identify the speaker.
- Transcripts can be used as a text alternative for synchronized media and can be easier to edit and modify in the future than audio descriptions.
Transcript
Welcome back to the Easy A11y Guide channel. This is part of our quick audit series. In this video, I’ll be talking about captions and transcripts.
Open and closed captions
The first one is open captions. Open captions are always on in your video. You may have seen these on TikTok or other social media platforms where people generally have content muted. The caption is always there telling you information. The advantage of closed open captions is that you can specifically place them and put them right where you want them. The disadvantage of open captions is that they can’t be adjusted, customized, or, of course, turned off.
Closed captions are the most popular. People can turn them on and off as desired. They can also be used to translate content between different languages. It’s much less expensive to have someone translate content from English to Spanish and just put the Spanish captions than it is to translate the entire video from English to Spanish.
You do want to check your content to make sure that nothing important is being obscured by the captions. If something is always present on your video, like my slides and links information, that can be covered by captions as there will be times during the video where it’s not.
You also want to make sure that your video player allows for captions to be easily found. For example, here on YouTube, the default video player has the volume and the captioning at the same menu level. This is what’s expected.
Captions need to be accurate
Captions, regardless of whether they are open or closed, need to be accurate. One of the preferences with closed captions is if you do make a typo, it’s very easy to fix since the caption file is separate from the video file. You also need to make sure with your captions that you identify the speaker if it is not clear from the video and that you identify important sounds relative to the context of the video. For example, if a doorbell goes off and then everyone in the video runs to the door, that doorbell is an important sound that you want to have in the captions.
Live versus recorded content and captions. Small inaccuracies are permitted in live content. As long as those inaccuracies don’t cause understanding issues. For example, small typos are generally fine. A significant misspelling of a name, which would confuse one character with another, would not be okay.
Recorded content needs to be proofread and corrected. It’s very common to use AI to do the initial captioning, but you then need to have a real human review the captions and correct. For pre-recorded audio-only or video-only content, they have to have a text transcript. The most common example here is podcasts.
Text transcripts
The text transcript needs to be keyboard accessible so that people with low vision can easily access it. The transcripts need to be accurate and proofread. Of course, you need to identify the speaker when there are multiple speakers. Just like with captions, make sure to include any important audio noises that happen.
Again, the doorbell example. When you have synchronized media or media with both an audio and a video track, like this video, then you want to make sure that there is either an audio description or a text alternative. Transcripts can make a great text alternative and is easier to edit and modify in the future if you need to make an adjustment than an audio description which has to be recorded. In order for a transcript to be an accurate text alternative, it needs to include any visual info that is important from the video. For example, for these slides, as long as I have information and a link to the slides, then that information does not need to be written out in the transcript.
Thanks for watching. I’m Gen Herres from the Easy A11y Guide, where we try to make accessibility easier to implement through done-for-you services, tools, and processes. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up. It really helps our channel.
You can subscribe to our channel for more accessibility tips and to be notified when new videos are released. For more information on web accessibility, including services, tutorials, and more, please visit easya11yguide.com. Thank you so much again for watching, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.