[REVIEW: Verify against live product before announcing.]
Captions are the most important accessibility feature for video. They are required by WCAG 2.1/2.2 Success Criterion 1.2.2 (Captions, Prerecorded). Without them, viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing cannot get the audio content of your video.
What conformant captions include
Conformant captions are not the same as a transcript. They include:
- All spoken dialogue, accurately transcribed and timed
- Speaker identification when more than one speaker is in scene and the visual does not make it obvious
- Non-speech audio that conveys meaning, written in brackets:
[door slams],[music swells],[sirens in distance] - Sound effects that signal events viewers cannot otherwise know about
A literal verbatim transcript without speaker labels and without non-speech cues is not conformant captions.
Auto captions vs conformant captions
VideoPlayer.ai's auto captions handle the spoken dialogue. They do not add non-speech notes or speaker labels. To make a video's captions conformant, plan to edit captions before publishing:
- Read through the auto-captions for spelling and timing.
- Add speaker labels where needed.
- Add bracketed non-speech notes where audio carries meaning.
- Save.
Open captions vs closed captions
| Type | Definition | When you would pick it |
|---|---|---|
| Closed (CC) | Toggleable in the player | Most uses; the default for VideoPlayer.ai |
| Open | Burned into the video frames | Social media autoplay, environments without a CC toggle |
VideoPlayer.ai's player uses closed captions. If you need open captions, burn them into your source video before uploading.
Subtitles vs captions
Subtitles assume a hearing audience and only translate the dialogue. Captions assume a deaf or hard-of-hearing audience and include the non-speech information they need. The two are not interchangeable for accessibility.