Approximately 11 million people in the UK have hearing impairments, making it the second most common disability in the country.
Captions can help those with hearing impairmentsallowing them to engage fully with video content. They are also essential in situations where watching with sound is impractical or inappropriate. Did you know around 85% of all social media videos are now watched without sound.
You must ensure the information in media content is available to all users. This can be achieved by providing captions (also referred to as subtitles) and text transcripts.
Captions
Captions are a text version of the speech and non-speech audio information which provide content to people who are deaf and others who cannot hear the audio. They are also used by people who process written information better than audio.
Captions are required if you have a video with audio content. This is for both pre-recorded and live videos with audio.
Transcripts
A transcript must include speech and non-speech audio information as well as visual information such as visual cues and descriptions of action. This helps provide audio and video content to people who are both deaf and blind. They are also used by people who process text information better than audio and visual/pictorial information.
Text transcripts are required if you have audio-only and/or video-only (no audio content) media.
This achieves WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.2.1 Audio-only and Video-only (Pre-recorded), 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded) and 1.2.4 Captions (Live).
Learn how to Transcribe Audio to Text
Guidance on transcribing audio to text for captions and transcripts.