on captions on YouTube and their importance, in celebration of International Week of the Deaf

In the first video I went through what captions are and why they’re actually useful, the second video

was a quick breakdown of how to add captions to YouTube videos and tomorrow’s video will

give you a bit more insight into these symbols and what they mean...

Today though, let’s go through some frequently asked questions about captions. I asked for

your questions about captions on my Instagram and Twitter (you can follow me on those if

you don’t already…) and I’ve done my best to answer them but if you have any more

questions, please do leave them in the comments below.

And now on to what you should and shouldn’t be including in your captions.

Firstly though, a few misconceptions about who is actually using the captions:

Currently people watch YouTube videos with captions more than 15 million times per day

and the number of videos with them is 1 billion.

A study on television accessibility by Ofcom found that 80% of people who use closed captions

are neither deaf nor hard of hearing, but they might be...

Watching in a loud environment

Trying to watch without distracting others

Using really faulty audio speakers

Struggling with the inconsistent volume of this video

Watching in a foreign language

Watching a really sensitive subject matter in public

Trying to save battery consumption

Taking notes from educational videos

While the remaining 20% are people who do have

some degree of hearing loss and are thus the most important costumer

for your closed captions because they need them.

It does go to show that the demand for closed captions isn’t just limited

to one certain group of people and it's specially not one

small a group of people- ok but we already went through that in video 1!

There are more deaf people thank you think

“But Jessica, c'mon now, films, television and YouTube videos are all visual- is the audio really

that important?”

(High pitched) Ok, you try watching everything without sound

and let me know how it goes(!)

Picture your favourite tv show- yes, my fave

is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, yes, I know it ended 15 years ago, no, I don’t care-

Undying love.

Try to envisage how many different types of audio there can be in one scene:

You've got:

On-screen dialogue: That's talking characters on screen, you can see them

Then you got your off-screen dialogue: That's characters who are talking out of the frame

Or a narrator, or a voice over.

I'm thinking Gossip Grl.

Third we have On-screen action sounds

This can be steps that you see being taken it can be swords clashing together in a battle

It can be a glass falling and smashing on the floor

Anything you can actually see happen.

Then Off-screen action sounds: this is someone coming into the front door downstairs

Or a zombie you thought was dead lying

behind her and it's not cause it's groaning.

Five, Background noise This could be traffic, other people

talking in the cafeteria, um...

an army of slayers doing battle with vampires.

Uh, spoiler! Is it still a spoiler if it is 15 years old?

Next, In-story media: this is television that is playing around, a radio that is on in the background

This is stuff that the characters can actually hear themselves.

Music soundtrack...[whispering] Oh I cannot raise this finger with this one, alright.

Music soundtrack this is music that is laid over in post-production

This is the music that only the viewer can hear and the character cannot

It's called non-diegetic for you filmmaking buffs

Number 8, additional effects: again this is layered in post-production

This would be something like a vampire going [Poof]

[Imitates explosion sound effect]

Closed captions are important because they

help describe every sound and audio cue that plays a part in the story itself.

In the wider whole, it builds the narrative up.

So without many of the things I just mentioned you’ll be missing out on a wide range of

cues that are used to build a story

It's not just the language, the spoken words that are important

Convinced you need to use captions yet? Wonderful!

I explained in video 1 about the difference

between subtitles and closed captions so I’m going to move on to the second most asked question

Which is: What is the difference between ‘open captions’ and ‘closed captions’?

Open captions are those embedded in the video file that you as viewer has no control over.

Think for instance when Netflix does automatic translations into English

of characters who are speaking in Spanish and they put that on screen like

parts of Orange Is The New Black.

Or when you go and see the cinema and is a captioned screening

There are all the subtitles at the bottom you can't turn them on or off yourself as a viewer

Closed captions are those that are hidden until turned on.

These are the types that you get in most television sets and look

Down there!

Down to the nitty-gritty: what SHOULD and

SHOULDN’T you include in your YouTube captions?

Just to say: I don’t have a degree in captions, obviously

I have a degree in Film Studies.

It's mildly useful in my job.

It's actually pretty useful in my job.

Also, I’m just one deaf person, we all have very different views and experiences

I'm sure there are some in the comment section down bellow that are

completely different from mine and that's great because I welcome different people's different views

What if I make a grammatical error? Should I include that in my captions?

Good question. It may feel like correcting

yourself is of course the most sensible thing to do and easier for the viewer

but what you’re forgetting

is that YouTube is about personalities, you’re being honest and open with the viewer and

that’s what they’re responding to. Your hearing viewers are able to experience the

authentic sound of you- perhaps you have an amazingly Yorkshire accent

and say ‘si’ thi’ later’ at the end of all of your videos

Don’t ‘correct’ that to ‘see you later’ How dull!

However, it isn’t completely unnecessary to keep in ALL of your ums and ahs and mm

Or 'likes'

Unless you’re using them for punctuation. They can slow the reader down when faced with an

onslaught of rapid dialogue and captions appearing too quickly on screen.

You can cut out those unnecessary words but don't ever change the meaning of what you are saying

Or show if you are comically hesitating that (comically hesitating)

it needs to be in your subtitles as well for a reason.

How do I add line breaks to captions on YouTube?

YouTube- semi annoyingly- doesn’t allow you to actually include

a line break when you are transcribing your words

in the ‘create captions’. Go back to video 2 if you are confused.

This can be really frustrating when you

want to transcribe two people who are on screen at the same time but differentiate what they're saying

The best option is to write your caption out elsewhere and then copy and paste

Maybe in the Notes section on your computer or a Word document or something like that

How do I ensure that my deaf and Hard Of Hearing viewers can enjoy watching

my videos just as much as my hearing viewers?

Boom! This is called ‘equal access’

It requires that the meaning and intention of the material

is entirely and completely preserved.

That’s everything from making sure that you caption the sound

effects and dialogue to being true to accents and including some grammatical errors.

Try to convey exactly what’s being communicated. Again though, do be aware of not throwing

too many words up on screen because it's just going to get confusing and scary for the viewer.

It’s okay to edit dialogue to be shorter and simpler but you can't change the meaning

or skip things.

Do I caption swear words and inflammatory language?

This is actually a far trickier question than it first appears!

On the one hand, yes, you

definitely need to let deaf and HoH viewers know you’re swearing!

Do not infantilise them and do no think they are stupid.

On the other hand…

[Gasp]

[Whispering] It's coming for you...

If you bleeped or partially muted the swear word in your audio then do the same in your captions

I’ll be talking a little more in the fourth video of this series about

Words that you can use in the place of swear words

But if you’re happy to risk angering the

algorithm then go right ahead and do bandy your curses around.

[Humming]

Be true to yourself.

Speaking of being true to yourself...

To stop my videos getting demonetised when I talk about my sexuality I’ve taken the

word out of my title, tags and description- should I also take it out of any captions I make?

If you’re one of those people that gets in trouble with the algorithm

largely for LGBTQ+ things then

please don’t stop talking about it it's very important you do that

Do not stop talking about it!

But also don't stop making your videos accessible.

Consider instead using a mix of closed and open captions.

Uhhh

If you have a sentence that’s

a little risque then embed it in the video itself.

Using open captions in the editing stage

and then use closed captions for the rest of the video-

So that someone who needs to use the captions and searches for videos can then filter

Can still find your video because it has closed captions but also get

[whispering] what is that you are trying to say

and then hopefully the algorithm won't come for you.

IF again, if it's coming for you anyway...you do you! Throw all the words you want in there

Should I caption all background noise?

Since we’re dealing specifically with YouTube rather than scripted television where every single

audio thing you hear is there purposefully

I would say...yes and no.

Only put in the background noise that

you interact with or respond to.

If a phone is ringing in the next room and you don’t respond to it

Or notice it until afterwards when you are editing and then the video goes up

There is no need to put in your captions:

'Phone ringing in other room'

It's just not necessary, it's not part of the dialogue it's not part of the narrative

But if there is a lawnmower

going outside of your bedroom window and you pause every two minutes to get comically annoyed

about the lawnmower then yes!

Add in '[lawnmower]' and' [lawnmower continues]'

and '[lawnmower won’t shut up]'

Which again brings us to...

Can I put jokes in my captions?

Right, this obviously isn’t about directly transcribing a joke that you have made.

This is about whether

or not it is okay to make jokes that exist entirely within the captions

Tricky

ON the one hand, as I mentioned in video 2, [High pitched]I find it incredibly frustrating

When someone thinks it’s hilarious to go in and fiddle with the captions in an ‘amusing’ way

that actually makes the video completely inaccessible for those of us who are deaf or HoH

On the other hand, if you want to:

Then yeah, go right ahead.

I think that’s okay. It’s more an exaggerated description of an amusing auditory

situation. As long as you’re not holding certain viewers back from understanding the

text as a whole then it’s fine to joke- especially if it’s something just for viewers

who need to read like

That’s just my opinion though! Other deaf and hard of hearing people please leave your

own thoughts down below.

Should I caption the cover videos I make- especially since using lyrics might

be a copyright problem?

Ok, if you’ve already been given the okay by

the holder of the copyright to cover the song or use a clip in your video then just go ask them

if you can also have the OK in text form.

If you haven’t and your cover hasn’t been picked

up by the algorithm as being a cover then,

i.e no one has tried to take the profits of the AdSense from you yet

Then yes, you might want to be a little wary…

Potentially unpopular opinion in here but,

There are websites and other videos have lyrics of the most famous

songs there are, also really small songs that no one knows at all

I don't think you have to caption those videos

If you have written your own original song then yes, please, do caption it. Firstly,

That's really important because

I mean firstly it's not only deaf people who use captions

And secondly deaf people can enjoy

music too. [Gasps]

Shocker!

Can I alter the position of my captions?