Captions provide text version of media that are synchronized with the audio or video track, and include not only the dialogue, but also "identify who is speaking and notate sound effects and other significant audio." [1] Captions can be open or closed and from a live or pre-recorded source.
Captions are sometimes referred to as subtitles; however, for the purpose of this guide, captions will refer to contextualized audio for the same language as the media and subtitles will refer to audio translated into another language.
Open captions are those that display without being turned on. The user has no control over whether or not the captions are shown.
Closed captions are those that can be shown or hidden by the user.
Although most captions are closed, they can be open, closed, or a combination of both depending on the purpose of the media.
Guideline 1.2.4 - Captions (Live): Captions are provided for all live audio content in synchronized media. (Level AA)
Live media, or real-time media, is a broadcast live during a presentation, instructional session, or conference. Live captioning is typically done by professional captioners.
Guideline 1.2.2 - Captions (Pre-recorded): Captions are provided for all pre-recorded audio content in synchronized media, except when the media is a media alternative for text and is clearly labeled as such. (Level A)
If the media is pre-recorded, the accessibility expectation is that it will be accompanied by captions when the media is posted.
Most of the captions that will be included in your research guides will be from pre-recorded media. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the accessibility guideline expectations with live captioning. Currently, accessibility for multimedia calls do not fall under guideline 2.1. Instead, it is the responsibility of the "callers" to verify they have the ability to provide captions for situations such as audio or video calls with students or peers for interviews, conferences, and/or consultations if necessary. However, trying to remain vigilant about accessibility is always a best practice.
In order to ensure that all users can use their database training tutorials, the University Libraries provides captions for all tutorial videos.
An instructor wants to show a documentary in class, but first they make sure the video is captioned - and that the captions are turned on - so that everyone in class can view it.
Many programs that allow users to create audio-visual media offer a built-in ability to add captions; however, even those need to be edited so that the captions appear concurrent with the audio or video. Additionally, some programs, such as YouTube, offer automatically-generated captions. Typically, these programs generate text and sync the text with any dialogue in the media, but this is not a perfect solution. Often, the programs do not include grammatical syntax, meaning the caption is one long non-capitalized run-on sentence. They also don't include non-spoken sounds, which may be pertinent to the presentation. You may also find that your dialogue has been mistranscribed, which could lead to disastrous captions.
Bad automatic captioning:
Spoken text: "Broil on high for 4 to 5 minutes. You should not preheat the oven."
Automatic caption: "Broil on high for 45 minutes. You should know to preheat the oven." [3]
This type of transcribing error can be avoided by always editing your captions and watching the media with captioning turned on to verify the synchronization.
Using a program that provides automatic captioning in a great place to start because most will complete the most difficult aspect of captioning for you - syncing the captions with the audio track. For instance, YouTube provides automatic captioning. It breaks the captioning into "scene by scene" chunks of text that are already synched with the audio. All you need to do is correct any grammatical and spelling errors.