Captions and Videos

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

• 3Play Media
• Echo Labs

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

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).

We recommend using closed captions instead of open captions. 

Closed Captions are a separate file that is added to a video. 

• More flexibility for the user: Users can choose to turn captions on or off. They can also customize the text size or switch to a different language.
• Easier to fix: If you find a typo, you can edit the caption file instead of recreating the video.

Open Captions are "burned" into the video during the editing process.

• Less flexibility for the user: Users can't turn the captions off and can't customize them for their needs. 
• Harder to fix: If you find a typo, you will have to edit the original video to fix your captions. 

If you decide to use open captions, you will need to make sure that they are fully accurate, in sync with the audio, and meet color contrast requirements. 

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 identification, 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. 

All videos are required to have captions.

• 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.
• If your video only has music, 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.

Please see our Audio Description Guidance for additional support.