Videos and audio: captions, transcripts, and context

Making multimedia content accessible without making it feel like a compliance exercise.

Beyond compliance thinking

Video and audio content can powerfully explain complex concepts, demonstrate processes, and connect with your audience in ways that text alone cannot. But without accessibility considerations, multimedia can exclude significant portions of your audience - not just people with hearing differences, but anyone in sound-sensitive environments, non-native speakers, people with audio processing difficulties, or those who simply prefer reading along with audio.

Effective multimedia accessibility serves everyone while ensuring that no one misses important information because of how it's delivered. The goal isn't adding accessibility features as an afterthought, but creating content that works well for different ways of accessing and processing information.

Good multimedia accessibility often improves content quality overall by forcing you to organise information clearly, speak more deliberately, and provide multiple ways for users to engage with your material.

The three essential elements

Captions provide synchronised text for spoken content, including dialogue, speaker identification, and relevant sound effects. They appear on screen as the audio plays, helping people follow along whether they can't hear the audio or need additional support to process spoken information.
Transcripts offer complete text versions of all audio content, typically provided alongside or near the multimedia. They serve people who prefer reading to listening, help with searchability and reference, and ensure that all spoken information remains accessible even when audio fails or isn't available.
Audio descriptions explain visual elements that are crucial to understanding but not covered in the spoken content. These matter most when visual demonstrations, on-screen text, or actions provide information that someone listening without seeing would miss.

Most content needs captions and transcripts. Audio descriptions become important when visual information is essential to understanding rather than merely supplementary.

Creating effective captions

Good captions go beyond simply displaying spoken words. They include speaker identification when multiple people talk, relevant sound effects that affect meaning or context, and timing that allows comfortable reading while following the content flow.

Accurate transcription matters more than perfect formatting, but both contribute to usability. Captions should appear when words are spoken, stay visible long enough for reading, and use consistent formatting for speaker identification and sound descriptions.

Auto-generated captions provide a useful starting point but require editing for accuracy, especially with technical terminology, proper names, and complex sentences. They often miss punctuation that affects meaning and fail to identify speakers or describe relevant sounds.

The investment in caption quality depends on your content's importance and audience. High-stakes content like training materials or public communications benefits from careful caption review, while casual content might work well with lightly edited auto-generated options.

Transcript strategy and format

Transcripts serve multiple purposes beyond accessibility - they improve search engine optimisation, provide reference material for users, and offer a mobile-friendly alternative to video content. Well-formatted transcripts include speaker names, relevant sound descriptions, and enough structure to be useful as standalone documents.

For longer content, timestamps every few minutes help users navigate between transcript and video. For instructional content, consider organising transcripts with clear section breaks that match your video's structure, making it easy to find specific information.

Transcripts don't need to capture every "um" and verbal pause, but they should include all substantive content and enough context to make sense independently. Include relevant sound effects and music descriptions, but focus on elements that affect understanding rather than cataloging every background noise.

The transcript format should match how people will use it. Reference materials might need detailed formatting and timestamps, while simple explanatory videos might work better with cleaned-up conversational transcripts that read naturally.

When visual information needs description

Not every video requires audio descriptions, but they become important when visual demonstrations, on-screen text, charts, or actions provide information that isn't clear from dialogue alone. Instructional videos showing techniques, presentations with important slides, or content that relies on visual processes often need additional description.

The most effective approach integrates visual descriptions into original narration rather than creating separate audio tracks. Instead of saying "as you can see here," describe what you're showing: "I'm placing my thumb on the child's lower lip to provide tactile support for the 'p' sound."

For content where integrated description isn't practical, detailed transcripts can include visual information in brackets or separate sections. This approach provides accessibility without requiring additional audio production while ensuring that people who can't see the visual elements understand the complete process.

Consider whether visual elements are essential to your content's purpose or primarily decorative. Essential visual information needs description or alternative explanation, while decorative elements can be acknowledged briefly or omitted from accessibility features.

Implementation workflow for different content types

Live presentations and webinars benefit from preparation that builds accessibility into the original delivery. Plan to describe visual elements as you present them, ensure good audio quality, and speak clearly enough for accurate auto-captioning that requires minimal editing afterward.
Instructional videos work best when you script both dialogue and visual descriptions during planning. Consider how to explain research procedures verbally, plan pauses for processing complex information, and ensure that someone listening without seeing would understand the complete process or study requirements.
Promotional or overview videos need assessment of whether key information appears only visually. If important messages rely on text overlays, graphics, or visual demonstrations, ensure that narration covers essential points or that accompanying text provides equivalent information.

The complexity of your accessibility approach should match your content's purpose and audience. High-impact instructional content justifies more thorough accessibility features than casual promotional videos, but basic captions and transcripts benefit virtually all multimedia content.

Tools and quality considerations

Many platforms offer auto-captioning as a starting point, but quality varies significantly with speaker clarity, background noise, technical terminology, and accent variation. YouTube's auto-captions work well for clear speech with common vocabulary but struggle with specialised terms and proper names common in professional content.

Professional captioning services provide higher accuracy and better formatting but require time and budget that might not be justified for all content. The middle ground involves starting with auto-generated captions and editing for accuracy, focusing on technical terms, speaker identification, and timing issues.

For transcript creation, audio transcription tools like Otter.ai or Rev.com can provide usable starting points that require editing for formatting and accuracy rather than complete rewriting. The time investment in editing usually provides better results than creating transcripts from scratch.

Consider your workflow sustainability when choosing tools and processes. Perfect captions aren't necessary for every piece of content, but consistent basic accessibility serves users better than sporadic high-quality features mixed with completely inaccessible content.

Test your multimedia accessibility by watching content with sound off, listening without looking at visuals, and reading only transcripts to ensure complete information transfer through each access method. This self-testing reveals gaps that might not be obvious when using all channels simultaneously.

User feedback helps identify real-world usability issues with captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions. People who regularly use these features can provide insights about timing, formatting, and completeness that improve accessibility more effectively than theoretical compliance checking.

Check your understanding

Copy and paste this to ChatGPT when you're ready for feedback:

I've been completing some questions as part of an SEO course. I'm currently answering questions for a section titled "Videos and audio: captions, transcripts, and context". Please check my answers and let me know if I've understood the key ideas correctly. My responses are below.

1. A colleague argues that adding captions and transcripts is "too time-consuming for small teams like ours" and suggests that auto-generated captions are sufficient because "most people can hear anyway." Using examples from the lesson, analyse why this reasoning creates barriers for broader audiences beyond just people with hearing differences, and explain how multimedia accessibility serves organisational goals rather than just compliance requirements.

2. What are the three main components of multimedia accessibility?

Captions, audio descriptions, and sign language interpretation
Transcripts, volume controls, and speaker identification
Captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions
Auto-generated text, manual corrections, and time stamps

3. When might audio descriptions be necessary for a video?

When the video is longer than 5 minutes
When visual demonstrations or on-screen information are crucial to understanding
When the video includes background music
When multiple people are speaking

4. You're creating a 10-minute instructional video showing proper techniques for speech therapy exercises. The video includes demonstrations, on-screen text with key points, and verbal explanations. What accessibility features would you prioritise and why?

5. Consider this scenario: Your organisation regularly creates promotional videos featuring researchers discussing their work, but budget constraints mean you can only invest in comprehensive accessibility features for some content. A stakeholder argues for prioritising "high-visibility" promotional content over instructional materials because "more people see the promotional videos." Evaluate this approach and propose criteria for making accessibility investment decisions that balance practical constraints with user needs.

6. A content creator insists that well-designed videos "shouldn't need transcripts because good visuals tell the story." They argue that requiring transcripts forces them to "dumb down" their creative approach and makes content "less engaging." Analyse why this perspective misunderstands both accessibility principles and effective multimedia design, and explain how transcripts can enhance rather than compromise content quality.