Text transcripts, captions and sign language
[Narrator:] Text transcripts, captions and sign language. These accessibility solutions are designed to support people with auditory impairments. The basic idea is to convert audio information into text. The audio information itself could be part of an audio-only media, such as a podcast or MP3 file. Or it could be part of a multimedia file, such as a film, which contains both audio and video information. Now we will introduce the different options.
Text transcripts
Text transcripts provide a textual version of the content that can be accessed by anyone. They also allow the content of your multimedia to be searchable, both by search engines and by end-users. Transcripts do not have to be the verbatim text of the spoken word in a video. They should also contain additional descriptions, explanations or comments that could be useful, such as indications of sound effects or audience laughter. The transcript should be displayed close to the audio or video content, so that it can be easily found.
This is a webpage of a German radio station. You can start the audio playback by clicking on the triangle. The audio content is presented on this webpage in text-form, unabridged and unaltered.
[Foreign language.]
[Narrator:] Following this approach, a person with auditory impairments gets access to the same information.
Here is another example of a video embedded into a web page with the text transcript below.
[Screen reader:] There are nearly a 120 million people, like this man in Berlin, with mild to severe disabilities in Europe. Every day they are confronted by society which is often poorly adapted to their needs.
[Narrator:] Once we start the video, we can see that those parts of the transcript that are being spoken are highlighted.
[Screen reader:] In a draft report, members of the European Parliament want to support people with disabilities. Especially in the field of employment. Unemployment affects people with disabilities twice as much as those without.
[Foreign language.]
[Narrator:] When we click on a sentence in the transcript, the video moves to the corresponding position.
[Foreign language.]
[Narrator:] Even though this feature is optional, it is highly appreciated. You can test it using the link below the video. Please note how every word spoken in the video is part of the transcript.
Following are some additional advantages of transcripts: Users can quickly scan a transcript to learn about the media subject before pressing play. Transcripts can be printed or converted to braille. They can be read offline on any desktop or mobile device. This can be useful for users whose connection to the internet is limited by bandwidth. Transcripts can be searched easily and are therefore indexed by search engines. They can be used as a basis for foreign-language translation. This is especially useful for those working with machine translations.
Captions
Captions are text versions of the spoken words presented within multimedia. You might know them as subtitles in films. Though captioning is primarily intended for those who cannot hear the audio, it can also support people who are not fluent in the language in which the audio is presented.
Let’s use the video of the previous example to demonstrate captions. This video offers not only captions in the original language, but many others as well.
[Screen reader:] There are nearly a 120 million people, like this man in Berlin, with mild to severe disabilities in Europe. Every day, they are confronted by a society which is often poorly adapted to their needs. How the society adapts itself or makes itself accessible in order to ensure that the person can fully live in equal opportunities with others. In a draft report, members of the European Parliament want to support people with disabilities, especially in the field of employment. Unemployment affects people with disabilities twice as much as those without.
[Foreign language.]
[Narrator:] You might have noticed the small icon showing CC. This abbreviation stands for closed captions. So let’s talk a little about captions terminology.
Captions terminology
Closed captions are captions that are not visible until they are activated by the viewer. The previous video was a perfect example of this. In contrast, open, burned-in or hard-coded captions are visible at all times. The captions are part of the video and cannot be switched off.
Most of the world does not distinguish captions from subtitles, but in the United States and Canada these terms have different meanings.
Therefore, we will discuss their definitions here. Subtitles assume the viewer can hear but requires assistance with the language, so only the dialogue and some on-screen text is transcribed. Captions aim to describe all significant audio content: dialogue and non-speech information, such as audience laughter, background noises or dramatic music.
Caption file formats
When using closed captions, caption tracks are often stored separately from the video file. There are several competing file formats for adding captions to digital media: SubRip text (SRT) is the most common caption-file format. SubRip is a free software program for Windows that extracts subtitles and their timings from videos. The result is stored using the SubRip subtitle text-file format.
Web Video Text Tracks (WebVTT) is a standard of the World Wide Web Committee for displaying timed text in connection with HTML5 elements. There are other file formats that are less commonly used. Most are human-readable text formats that can be converted from one format to another. If you want to create captions, make sure that the target media-player platform supports your caption-file format.
Sign language
Sign languages use the visual manual method to convey meaning. They are fully-fledged natural languages with their own grammar and vocabulary.
When signing, a person uses their hands, arms and body to articulate single letters, words or sentences. Different natural languages use different sign languages to express the same meaning. Therefore, people with auditory impairments who are capable of signing in one sign language might have problems communicating in a different sign language. The graphic shows the British sign language alphabet. Therefore, please note that not everybody speaks the same sign language. Additionally, not every deaf person is able to understand sign language.
Sign language can be embedded in a video. In this case, part of the video might be overlapped by a frame showing the sign language interpreter. This approach has two disadvantages. The sign language interpreter is too small for every gesture to be recognised, and the position of a single finger can make a difference. The overlay may block an important part of the video, which creates the risk of losing content. A better approach is to split the screen. In one part, the sign language interpreter is shown in a sufficient size. And in the other part, the video is shown in a reduced size. As screen sizes for personal computers and TVs have increased significantly in recent years, this is the preferred approach.
Costs
We have seen three solutions for the transfer of audio-based information to text-based information. Some of these solutions are easier and faster to implement than others. Therefore, sorted from least to most expensive, we have the following:
- Transcripts, which can easily be created as simple texts, are positioned close to the original content. This is a good solution for many types of users and application scenarios.
- Captions are more difficult to create. Even though they are also just texts, they need to be synchronized with the original media. They are technically more challenging, as the player software must be capable of handling the caption-file format.
- Sign language is the most complex solution for the following reasons: A second video needs to be recorded, which needs to be cut and synchronized with the original video. The sign language video and the original video need to be combined in a new video. A website offering a sign language version of a video always needs to provide both videos, which duplicates the required storage.
Where to continue?
In this chapter you have learned how text transcripts, captions and sign language can improve the accessibility of your audio and video publications. Depending on your personal interests, you could continue with one of the following chapters:
- Fonts, sizes and colours
- Text transcripts, captions and sign language
- Plain language
[Automated voice:] Accessibility. For more information visit: op.europa.eu/en/web/accessibility.