The importance of captions: ensuring your content is heard

Video content has become a hugely popular medium for communicating online. It’s a great way for brands to reach their audience. However, for it to be truly effective, it’s crucial we include captions and that they add value.

Despite their importance, they are often overlooked or rely on AI-driven automation resulting in inaccurate wording. Those that do provide captions, often have serious readability issues. This results in a major accessibility gap that affects millions of people and limits your audience.

Evoluted's UX & accessibility services help brands to create inclusive browsing experiences that satisfy legal requirements, grow your customer base, and build brand loyalty, plus plenty of other benefits too. Read on to learn how captions play an important part in this.

And make sure you watch the video at the end for our top three tips for using captions!

What are captions?

Captions are the on-screen text that represents the spoken dialogue and meaningful audio cues, like [laughter] or [door slams]. They’re essential for anyone who can’t hear the audio — and incredibly helpful to many who can.

In the UK, we sometimes refer to captions as subtitles. 

There are two main types of captions:

• Closed Captions, which can be turned on or off by the viewer

• Open Captions, which are ‘burned in’ to the video and always visible

Both types have their place, but closed captions are generally preferred. They provide the user with a choice and integrate better with assistive technologies.

Captions are essential

You may not personally need captions, but you’ve probably been in situations where they’ve helped. For example, in a noisy café, a silent commute or when you’re just scrolling through socials without sound. For many people, this is a lived experience.

In the UK, around 18 million adults are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus. That’s close to a third of people.

For these users, captions aren’t a convenience, but a necessity for accessing your content. Without captions, your words are simply not being heard.

Captions also support those who process written information better than spoken words. This includes many neurodivergent people.

Providing transcripts or other written versions of your content can also help people who find it difficult to absorb information delivered solely through audio.

Captions help everyone

Including captions is important for providing an inclusive experience. However, as I’ve already alluded to, they can be helpful to everyone. 

Many of us find ourselves trying to watch video content in noisy environments. Here, captions enable us to follow the content, even when we’re surrounded by competing sounds. In quiet environments, we may need the captions to allow us to view the content in silence so that others aren’t disturbed.

Sometimes, we benefit from captions when the audio quality of the video is low, or we are struggling to comprehend the content. Strong accents, mumbling and loud background noise can make it difficult to follow what is being said.

Research shows that captions have become more than an accessibility feature. For example, younger generations are increasingly likely to prefer watching television with captions on.

Readable captions

Just adding captions isn’t enough. If you want to ensure your message is being heard, they need to be readable. Many get this wrong.

We recently wrote about why colour matters for creating an accessible experience. This applies to captions. For example, yellow text on a light background might look stylish, but for many it will be unreadable. To maintain good colour contrast, use a background colour behind the text.

As well as colour, our choice of font is also important. Use a simple sans serif font that is easy to read. The font size also wants to be large enough to read on mobile.

Another important consideration is to avoid using ALL CAPS, especially for long passages. These can be challenging to read for people with conditions like dyslexia. Studies have also shown that reading speeds are reduced when text is in all caps.

‘Karaoke’ and ‘Hormozi’ style captions

On the topic of readability, you’ve probably come across karaoke or Hormozi style captions. These styles, with their bouncing words, emojis and colour changes, are common on social media. However, they represent poor readability.

Karaoke-style captions may work when you’re belting out ABBA’s Waterloo on a Friday night; however, for most video content, captions that appear word-by-word aren’t helpful. People read at different speeds making this style of caption hard to follow.

Hormozi captions are dynamic, colourful and fast paced, with the occasional emoji thrown in for fun. However, these can be distracting to those that don’t require captions and can overwhelm neurodivergent people. They’re also difficult to follow if you need captions to understand what is being said. This means their use, whilst it might be eye-catching, will often lead to your message being missed.

Captions matter

People invest a lot of time creating video content. Unfortunately, many people will miss the message of this content due to absent or unreadable captions. Done right, captions ensure your content is accessible to all.

At Evoluted, we recognise the value captions add to your content. If you’re looking for further guidance on how accessible your video and web content is, contact us today to learn more about our Accessibility Audit Services.