It is clear that adding captions or subtitles to videos helps audiences with disabilities or hearing difficulties understand and process video content. However, video captions are proven to be helpful for those who are both hearing and non-hearing, with specialists citing benefits such as improvements in reading comprehension and language learning in children and adults (Gernsbacher 2015).
Captions vs. Closed Captions vs. Subtitles
Before we explore the benefits of video captions, it is important for us to distinguish between captions, closed captions, and subtitles, which are three separate entities.
- Captions refer to the general textual representations that convey a wide range of audio components in a piece of video media, such as descriptions of sound effects, descriptions of emotions that characters are experiencing, character identification, and information about any background music or noise that may be playing in addition to spoken dialogue.
- Closed captions are a specific type of captions that can be toggled on or off by the user. The term is often used interchangeably with captions, and it is the standard type of captioning that is utilized for television, film, and online video platforms like YouTube. For the sake of simplicity, we will refer to closed captions as captions for the remainder of this article.
- Subtitles are transcriptions of spoken dialogue in a piece of video content. They do not contain any additional information aside from what is being actively said in dialogue, narration, or commentary.
The image below illustrates an example of captions in a film. Environmental sounds, background music, and character emotions are typically marked in square brackets or in italics to differentiate from character dialogue.
Benefits of Video Captions
In the study compiled by Gernsbacher, it was argued that captions are especially useful for language acquisition and reading comprehension in children, adults learning to read, and persons who are deaf or hard of hearing (2015). In addition to helping audiences draw the link between a spoken word and its written counterpart, captions help audiences identify emotions and draw inferences as they provide additional contextual information crucial to understanding an event. From the results of over 100 empirical studies conducted over the span of decades, researchers saw captions lead to higher comprehension skills, higher reading and literacy skills, better memory recall, and higher test scores in auditory and listening evaluations (Gernsbacher 2015).
With the v26.1.0 release of the YuJa Lumina Video Platform, instructors are now able to review, validate, and refine translated captions in a side-by-side view, eliminating the need to switch back and forth, which may lead to inconsistencies or inaccuracies. The enhanced workflow and interface simplifies translation verification and improves overall efficiency when managing multilingual captions, allowing instructors to provide translated captions that convey information in a more precise and faithful manner. As improvements continue to be released, YuJa Lumina seeks to facilitate equitable digital learning via video content for all students.
Citations
Gernsbacher M. A. (2015). Video Captions Benefit Everyone. Policy insights from the behavioral and brain sciences, 2(1), 195–202. https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732215602130.
