Closed-captions provide a textual transcript of a video’s dialogue, sound effects, and music. Captions are of particular use to individuals who are Deaf or hard of hearing as they include background noises, speaker differentiation, and other relevant information translated from sound to text.
Although the terms ‘captioning’ and subtitling are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not the same thing:
- Captions are a transcription of same-language dialogue
- Subtitles are a translation from one language to another
Both appear as text on the bottom of your screen, and typically represent the speech between characters.
Captions come in two forms, ‘open’ or ‘closed’:
- Open captions are embedded into the video. They do not need to be accessed separately and cannot be turned off or on
- Closed captioning can be turned off and on by the viewer and is the usual form of captions on SBS television and SBS On Demand