Captions and Transcripts: Making Video and Audio Accessible

Video and audio have become central to how organizations share their message: weekly sermons, product demos, webinars, interviews, podcasts and short social clips. Without captions or transcripts, all of that is out of reach for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Captions and transcripts also help many others: people watching in a quiet waiting room or a noisy café, people learning the language, people who understand better when they read and people who want to skim or search for a specific moment. Here is how to provide them well.

Know the terms

• Closed captions are text versions of the spoken words and important sounds, synchronized with the video, that viewers can turn on or off.
• Open captions are burned into the video image and always visible. They are common on social media clips.
• Subtitles usually translate dialogue into another language and may not include sound information.
• Transcripts are text documents of the full audio. They are essential for audio-only content like podcasts, and helpful alongside video.
• Audio description narrates important visual information, such as on-screen text or actions, for people who are blind or have low vision. Accessibility guidelines expect it for prerecorded video when visual content is not otherwise explained.

Creating captions

Start with automatic captions

Many video platforms and editing tools generate captions automatically using speech recognition. They save enormous time and are improving steadily. But they make mistakes, especially with:

• Names of people, places and organizations.
• Scripture references and religious terms.
• Technical vocabulary and product names.
• Accents, overlapping speakers and poor audio.
• Punctuation and sentence breaks, which affect meaning.

Review and edit

Set aside time to watch the video with captions on and correct errors. For a weekly sermon or webinar, a focused review often takes less time than people expect once it becomes routine. Also add:

• Speaker identification when it is not obvious who is talking.
• Meaningful sound cues, such as [music], [laughter] or [applause].
• Readable line breaks, with captions kept to one or two lines on screen.

For important or public content, such as a major event or a training video, consider a professional captioning service.

Use standard caption files

Caption files in common formats like SRT or WebVTT can be uploaded to most video platforms and website players. Uploading a caption file, rather than burning captions into the video, lets viewers turn them on or off and resize them, and makes the text available to search engines.

Live captions

For live streams, online meetings and events, many platforms offer automatic live captions. For high-stakes live events, human real-time captioning, sometimes called CART, provides much higher accuracy. If someone requests live captioning as an accommodation, plan for it in advance. AI meeting tools raise other questions too, covered in our guide to AI meeting notes and transcription.

Publishing transcripts

• Place the transcript on the same page as the video or audio player, or link to it directly beside the player.
• Include speaker names and clear paragraph breaks.
• Describe important visual content in the transcript when the video relies on it.
• For podcasts, link the transcript in the episode notes and on your website.

Transcripts also make your content easier for search engines and AI tools to understand, which can help people find it.

A simple weekly workflow

For a church, nonprofit or small business publishing regular video:

1. Record with a good microphone; clear audio improves automatic captions dramatically.
2. Upload and generate automatic captions.
3. Review and correct names, terms and punctuation.
4. Publish with captions available, and post the transcript on the page.
5. Keep a short list of frequently misheard names and terms to speed up the next review.

Captions are one part of a welcoming website. See our website accessibility checklist for the rest, and our guide to church and nonprofit website essentials for where media fits on a mission website.

Frequently asked questions

Are automatic captions good enough?

They are a helpful starting point, but uncorrected automatic captions often contain errors that change meaning. Review and edit them, especially names, numbers and key terms, before considering a video accessible.

Do podcasts need transcripts?

Yes. Audio-only content is inaccessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing without a transcript, and transcripts also help listeners find and revisit information.

What is the difference between captions and subtitles?

Captions represent the spoken words and important sounds in the same language for people who cannot hear the audio. Subtitles usually translate dialogue for viewers who speak a different language.