Hearing

People who are deaf or hard of hearing communicate in many ways. Some rely on visual information, such as captions and sign language. Others will use their residual hearing to listen to audio information – often using some kind of assistive listening device. In addition to captions, consider providing a version of the video with an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter.

Learn what reading poor-quality captions can be like for people with hearing loss and how accurate, high-quality captions can be more inclusive of people who are deaf and hard of hearing.

Test automated captions
Laptop with fullscreen video with captions on and no sound (also shows audio description): When YouTube Automatic Closed Captioning Goes Wrong from McMaster University on the computer.

Steps for activity:
1. Watch the entire video (it’s only about two minutes long).
2. Here are three automatically generated captions from the video. Write down what you think the caption should say.
shortage a lawyer =

he knew everything =

the plug on March you need to get it =

Look at the answer key. How did you do?
What you can do!
1. Include closed captions for all dialog, narration and background sounds. It is not your job to censor the audio. If you can hear it, caption it.
2. Check for accuracy. Make sure the captions are in-sync with the audio and are correct.
3. Make sure captions don’t interfere with any on-screen graphics or existing text.
4. Provide a way for the viewer to adjust the font, size and colors of captions.
5. Supply transcripts to convey all of the information being communicated through an audio track.
6. Ensure high-quality foreground audio that is clearly distinguishable from any background noise.
7. Provide options to stop, pause and adjust the volume of audio content independent of the system volume.
More Resources
What are quality captions?

Approximately 20% of Americans have hearing loss. For many people with hearing loss, having access to quality captions is crucial to understanding what is being said on videos and with live content.

Quality captions:
1. Identifies who is speaking if it is not easy to see who is talking, if several people are talking quickly back and forth, or if it is a narrator speaking;
2. Include speaker characteristics (talking very quietly, halting speech);
3. Include sound effects (eerie music, door creaking, knock at door);
4. Include the song lyrics or if it is music without lyrics, the title of the song; and
5. Pay attention to capitalization and punctuation. Great captions use punctuation to show the intensity of the speaker, interruptions, or if they stop speaking and then resume what they were saying.
Relying on automatic speech recognition (ASR) to produce captions for your video is not recommended – it is not reliable, as the activity demonstrates.

Captioning and Description Resources

The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP), funded by the US Department of Education, provides a nice Learning Center. Two great resources are:
- DCMP Captioning Key
- DCMP Description Key

More activities in this series:

Vision

Motor

Cognitive

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