Captions and Videos

Please see our Accessibility Vendor help page for our most up-to-date information on recommended vendors.

3Play Media: Help Guides and Resources

Important! Don't rely entirely on auto-captioning. Auto-captions are a great way to get started captioning your video, but do not meet accuracy requirements on their own. You must edit your auto-captions for accuracy. 

How to edit YouTube auto-captions

Sounds can be described and put in brackets, or spelled out (onomatopoeia), or both.

Example 1: [dog barking] 
Example 2: Woof, woof!
Example 3: [dog barking] Woof, woof!

Describe the background music style if needed, in brackets. If the background music plays for a long time, stop the caption frame after 4-5 seconds. If you include captions for song lyrics, add a musical note (♪) to the beginning and end of each line. 

Example: [ethereal classical music]
Example: ♪ Take another little piece of my heart now, baby ♪ 

Don't caption background music if it will interfere with the dialog captions.

Use punctuation to indicate the speed or pace of a sound effect. You can use an ellipsis for extended pauses, commas for brief breaks, and dashes for quick repetition.

Example: Oh... my... g-g-god. O, M, G.

Don't write captions in all caps. Only use all caps for YELLING or speaker identification

When listing out items in a series, use the Oxford comma.

Example: One, two, three, and four.

It may sometimes be appropriate to add a description of the speaker’s tone in brackets.

Example: [whisper], [aggravated]

If the speaker’s name is unknown, some alternatives are: STUDENT, AUDIENCE MEMBER, PROFESSOR. If there are multiple unknown speakers use numbers: STUDENT #1, STUDENT #2.

Example:
STUDENT #1: Hello.
STUDENT #2: Good morning.

If transcribing math content, use only numerals. For all other topics, write out numbers 1-10 (one, two), and use numerals for numbers over this (11, 53, 978), or use a combination for large, rounded numbers (3 million).

• People who are Deaf, or Deafblind
• People who are hard of hearing
• People with auditory processing disorders
• People who are visual learners
• People who want to to improve retention of information
• People in quiet environments with the sound off
• People in noisy environments
• People who are learning to speak English

Closed captions can be toggled on or off, and is added to a video as a seperate file. Closed captions can be edited later if errors are found. 

Open captions are burned into the video, cannot be changed by the end users, and are much more difficult to update or change if errors are found. 

Open captions may be compliant, but we recommend adding closed captions as well to improve the accessibility of your content. Closed captions give your end users more flexibility in turning the captions on and off, displaying the text size and style, and moving the placement of the captions.

Auto-generated captions are not accurate enough to be considered accessible. They are a great place to start when you're building your captions, but additional editing is required.

You will need to ensure your captions are fully accurate, have speaker identificaiton, have correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, and all important background information has been added.

Learn more about how to edit your auto-captions on YouTube. 

Captions should be written in the same language as the audio of the video. For example, if your video is in English, write your captions in English. If your video is in Spanish, write your captions in Spanish.

Learn more about how to caption a multi-lingual video. 

Captions are a text representation of the audio content. Captions are presented in the same language as the audio content. For example, a lecture in English will be captioned in English. 

Subtitles are a text translation of the audio content. Subtitles are translated into the language used by the intended audience. For example, a lecture in English will have subtitles to translate the lecture into Spanish. 

All videos are required to have captions. Even if your video has no sound, you will still need to include a caption file that says [no sound]. This lets users know that no sound is available for the video.

All videos are required to have captions, even if there is only music playing. If this is the case, describe the music to your audience. 

Examples: [Music fades in], [Loud drumming]  

Usually not. Natural speech tends to be messier than scripted speech and may be difficult to follow if all filler words and false starts are transcribed. A caption style called "clean read" removes most of the filler words to improve comprehension. When captions include every um, ah, and you know, this is called "full verbatim." This approach is only used for scripted speech (plays, TV) and court reporting.

For course lecture content, you have several options: 

• Kaltura: It is highly recommended that instructors use Kaltura, a supported video distribution service offered by our colleagues in Research Teaching and Learning (RTL). Please connect with them, and they can help you get started. Please note that The Disabled Students Program (DSP) can only support captioning when a Letter of Accommodation (LOA) is required for a UC Berkeley student. 
• 3rd Party Vendor: Please see our Accessibility Vendor help page for our most up-to-date information on recommended vendors.
• Edit your captions on YouTube: Learn more about how to edit your captions on YouTube. 
• Set your video to "private": If your video is not intended for public viewing, you may choose to set the video to "private".