Captions

Like subtitles, captions display spoken dialogue as printed words on the television screen. Unlike subtitles, captions are specifically designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. Captions identify speakers through IDs or careful placement. Special captions describe sound effects, music, and speaker affect (e.g., “sarcastically”). “Closed” captions are hidden as data within the television signal and must be decoded to be displayed on a television screen. Since 1993, all TV sets 13 inches or larger have had decoders built in. Anyone can turn the captions on and off through the remote control.

Unlike print on the page, verbatim captions appear and disappear at a predetermined rate, generally the rate of speech, which can be too fast for nonfluent readers (or for fluent readers who like to look at the images without needing to focus exclusively on the captions!). The goal of edited captions is to reduce children’s frustration in trying to keep up with the text, making it more likely they will enjoy and benefit from the program.

Edited captions display at about one word per second; up to half the words spoken on the audio track are cut to make this possible. At the same time, some difficult vocabulary and figurative language are replaced with text that children are likely to recognize more quickly. For example, “No, we do not! We never eat patrons of any kind. We are library lions.” is replaced with “We do not eat our library friends.” When broadcast programs are captioned at two levels, the viewer can choose which she or he wants and can change from one to the other via the remote control.