Captions and subtitles are vital for making video content accessible. They improve digital inclusion and provide a richer viewing experience for everyone. Whether closed or open, captions are text transcribed from the audio track of your video and displayed below it. Closed captions are hidden until activated, and open captions are always visible.
Reaching a Wider Audience
As more and more video content is created globally, subtitles allow brands to reach a much wider audience. A study by landing page software company Instapage found that videos with captions had a 16% increase in social reach on Facebook, where 85% of videos are watched on mute.
Captions and subtitles are also incredibly useful for international audiences where English isn’t the native language. With more than 7000 languages spoken worldwide, captions and subtitles can ensure that your video content is accessible in your global audience’s native tongue.
Lastly, captions describe all significant audio content, including speech and non-speech information like speakers’ identities, musical cues, sound effects and other onscreen text. They are transcribed in the same language as the video and typically appear at the bottom of a viewer’s screen. They are not to be confused with subtitles, which transcribe dialogue directly into another language and usually appear at the top of a viewer’s screen, usually for foreign films.
By adding captions and subtitles to your video content, you can be sure that all your audiences can access it regardless of their ability to hear or speak the video’s native language. Whether you create them yourself before exporting your video or choose to use a transcription service or automatic subtitle generator, adding captions and subtitles is a super simple process that can have a major impact on the reach of your videos.
Accessibility
Captions provide a textual representation of audio content to enable viewers who cannot hear video content to watch it. They are critical in ensuring that most of your potential audience is included in the video-viewing experience. Typically, captions are transcribed dialogue from the video and have important non-dialogue audio information such as music and sound effects.
They are synchronized with the video and can be toggled on or off by users via a CC button in the media player. They are often used in videos for the deaf and hard of hearing. Still, they also help people who process information more efficiently when presented in multiple modes (audio and text) and people who have their device’s sound turned off or are in a noisy environment.
Many people are watching video content without audio, whether they have hearing loss or prefer to do so. Captions and subtitles ensure that these viewers are included in the video viewing experience, and the benefits extend far beyond this audience.
For example, a video that has both subtitles and closed captions is accessible to people who are learning English as their second language, and it opens the door to potential global distribution. In addition, captions help video content rank higher in search engines if the keywords are properly tagged.
User Experience
Onscreen and timed with the video, captions are written representations of speech and other audio in videos. They can be “closed captions” hidden or shown by viewers or “open captions” that are always displayed and cannot be turned off. Both formats can improve the viewing experience for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, as well as those who process written information better than audio.
Originally, video captioning and subtitles were designed to make multimedia content accessible to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. But they also have many other benefits, including improving audience engagement, video discovery and SEO, and reaching a global audience.
In addition to helping audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing, closed captions can help people in noisy environments, such as airports, gyms, or sports bars. Additionally, closed captions can be useful for foreign-language videos, making it possible for non-native speakers to understand the content.
The best way to ensure that viewers can access your video’s subtitles is to include them in the video itself. It will allow you to style them ahead of time, which gives you more control over how they appear and how much they are visible. It is a key factor in ensuring that viewers can see your captions and don’t get distracted or frustrated by them.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is one of the most important factors in increasing online visibility and attracting new customers. Video captions can help with this. Having a video transcript and adding closed captions gives your video text-based content optimized with focused keywords. It is a big advantage over just having the video title and description.
Only the text in your video’s title, description, tags, and captions may be read by search engines. On the other hand, closed caption files are readable by search engine bots and are more visible to them than the actual video content itself. It’s so important to have a good subtitling service that can accurately translate the audio in your video into a foreign language and provide accurate, time-synchronized captions.
People are more likely to click on and watch videos with subtitles than those without. It leads to higher engagement rates for your videos, which translates into better SEO rankings. A study found that 91% of users who watched movies with subtitles finished them to the end. In addition, having your video content translated into foreign languages allows you to reach a much wider audience. It is essential today, when eight of the top 10 countries for YouTube views are non-English speaking nations, and 80% of YouTube visitors come from outside the United States.
