Captions and Transcripts


Benefits

  • Ensures a diverse audience can view your video, including deaf and hearing impaired, people for whom English is a second language, and in situations where noise is an issue or volume is turned off
  • Increases comprehension and retention. Seeing text and hearing audio together reinforces learning concepts, fosters understanding and use of unique vocabulary terms, and helps those with learning disabilities
  • Increases Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by making content in video easier to find

Captions

Captions are on-screen text descriptions that display a video's dialogue, identify speakers, and describe other relevant sounds. Captions are synchronized with the video so that viewers have equivalent access to the content that is originally presented in sound, regardless of whether they receive that content via audio or text. Captions are either open or closed.

  • Open captions always are in view and cannot be turned off
  • Closed captions can be turned on and off by the viewer
Please note that due to the settlement of the National Association of the Deaf lawsuit against MIT in July 2020, MIT is obliged to provide captioning of publicaly available video and audio. For more information, please see the MIT Accessibility and Captioning site.

Live Captions

A live-captioned event provides accessible content to attendees with hearing impairments or for whom English is a second language.  Live captions also boost retention for the audience at large. CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) is the term used to describe trained service providers that can create a visual transcript of audio in real-time for your audience, whether they be in attendance at your event or watching it online via a webinar platform. CART providers work live or via remote access.

Transcripts

Transcripts provide a textual version of the content that can be accessed by anyone who cannot hear, play, or otherwise use an audio file. Transcription of audio allows users to access and read the content as text.

All inquiries are welcome at accessibility [at] mit.edu.