Captioning

Captioning is an accessibility accommodation that allows deaf and hard-of-hearing students to access any dialogue and sounds from a video or around them. The dialogue and sounds are shown as text, known as captions. The captions are displayed on a screen, either on the video or a separate screen (tablet, desktop, web browser or app). Some captions are provided real-time or via artificial intelligence.

Learn about different types of captions below.

Captions

The term "captions" refer to captions that are prepared ahead of time, following a transcript and then added to the screen. You can find captions whenever you see the symbol "CC".

The overview article from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders describes different types of captioning and provides examples.

Read about:Assistive Technology

open captioning
closed captioning
projection systems
seat-based display systems

Note: Some platforms use the term "SDH" (Subtitles for Deaf and Hard of Hearing) instead of "CC".

Automatic Captions

Automatic captions are made possible with Artificial intelligence (AI). Captions are automatically generated using automatic speech recognition (ASR) software.

Auto captions is becoming increasingly popular on YouTube, mobile phones, apps and other video streaming platforms. While ASR continues to improve and become more accurate, auto captions are not considered effective communication for educational use.

Two ways to use the automatic captions:

1. Platform Accessibility Settings: Look at the accessibility settings of each platform to find captions. Some platforms use "CC" to inform that auto captions are available. See some examples below:

YouTube with the phrase "English (auto-generated).
Mobile phone accessibility settings may say "Live Captions"
Zoom, for videoconferencing, has "Turn Captions On"

2. Mobile Phone Apps: These are apps that you download on a desktop, table or mobile phone. They are speech to text based. Some apps have a cost. Some examples are listed below:

Ava, an app, offers both desktop and mobile app use.
Nagish, an app, captions phone calls.
Subtitles, an app, that generates large print captions.
Shazam or Musixmatch, music apps, that provide lyrics for songs.

Speech to Text Services

Speech-to-text services (STTS) use professional transcribers to listen to spoken language and transcribe into text in real-time. STTS differ from auto-captions because it does not use ASR. Read more about STTS from the National Deaf Center.

STTS is very accurate and an acceptable effective communication method for educational settings. STTS is also commonly used as an accommodation in a student's IEP. STTS can work with many videoconferencing or live stream platforms. The three most familiar STTS are:

Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) “Computer-aided transcription services” has since become known as “real-time captioning” or Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services, a professional service that can be delivered on location or remotely.

C-Print is a system for transcribing spoken English to text in real-time using a conventional computer keyboard and shorthand conversion software. C-Print provides meaning-for-meaning translation rather than word-for-word.

Typewell is another system for transcribing spoken English meaning-for-meaning to text.