Captions are a text version of the spoken audio.

They also include descriptions of important sounds, synchronized with the video. 

Captions must be available in order to ensure audio content is accessible to people from the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community. 

They also help:

• People learning English
• People who process information better if presented in multiple modes (sound and text)
• People with cognitive and developmental disabilities, especially those related to vocabulary
• People with audio processing disorders
• People with certain types of dementia
• People with certain types of autism spectrum disorder
• People who have the sound turned off on their devices
• People watching videos in noisy environments

Automated captions are not enough

At this point, automated captions are not enough to meet the WCAG 2.1 AA-level requirements for public entities. OAS strongly recommends that UVM staff, faculty, students, and departments take advantage of OAS' free captioning service to get fully accurate captions for all videos.

Please use closed captions instead of open captions

Closed captions are captions that users can turn on and off. Closed caption tracks allow users to customize the size, color, font, and background of captions. Closed caption tracks can also be accessed by screen readers. 

The image above shows the different customization options for closed captions that come with the YouTube player. They include: font family, font color, font size, background color, background opacity, window color, and window opacity.

Open captions are not enough to meet the WCAG 2.1 AA-level requirements for public entities. Open captions are captions that users can't turn on and off. They are often referred to as being "burned in" to a video; they're permanent. Open caption tracks don't allow users to customize the captions, and open captions cannot be accessed by screen readers. 

Subtitles are not the same as captions

Subtitles are similar to captions, but are used for translating spoken content into another language.

If subtitles are available for a video, they’re typically provided in a list of languages, accessed via the closed-caption button on the media player. Some media players erroneously use the term subtitles when referring to captions.

Audio description is for videos with no dialogue

Audio description is a separate narration track that describes the visuals in a video for people who are blind or low vision. If a video has no dialogue, it needs audio description for the visual content. 

Videos that need audio description are generally highlight reels and social video memes.

Audio description also benefits:

• People who are visually distracted
• People watching a video in the background while multitasking
• People with some types of autism spectrum disorder

OAS offers free audio description services for UVM students, staff, faculty, and departments. 

Transcripts are text versions of audio content

Without a transcript, many d/Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Deafblind people cannot access audio content.

Additionally, transcripts benefit: 

• People accessing the web using a Braille device
• People with slow Internet connections or other technical issues that prevent media from playing
• People searching the content for specific information

A transcript should contain every piece of dialogue that occurs in an audio file. Transcripts should be formatted to indicate when speakers change, which speaker said what, and they should include any meaningful non-speech sounds. A good rule of thumb is to format a transcript like a play or movie script, or a magazine interview.

OAS provides free transcription services for UVM students, staff, faculty, and departments.

Provide text description for non-dialogue audio

If an audio file has no spoken dialogue, it needs a text description in order to be accessible. For example: an audio file containing nothing but whale sounds should also have a text description describing the audio content. In this case it can be as simple as "Audio of whale sounds: moans, growls, deep rumbles, and high-frequency clicks and whistles."