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What Are Video Captions?

Image of young girl and a background of leaves with the following caption: [thinking] I wonder if we'll make piles of leaves later.

Example of how captions can indicate that the text is from a voiceover, courtesy of DCMP (Described and Captioned Media Program)

Captions display the audio as text on the video screen. Captions are not the same as a transcript. In addition to transcript information, captions include:

Speaker identification
Sound effects (“[thunder]”)
Other relevant information such as tone of voice (“[gleefully]”and speaker location (“[off screen]”)

Subtitles typically provide only spoken text.

Transcripts are written, verbatim, recordings of the audio content and when presented online are separate from the video, such as in an adjoining text box or even via a link. Section 508 states that transcripts alone are not a sufficient alternative to captions. However, some accessibility guidelines such as WCAG 2.0 do note that transcripts provide value for activities such as content scanning or searching.