- Better recall
- Easier reading
- Clearer accents
- One button, many viewers
EVERYONE
Watch it, read it, remember it
A 2015 review lists more than 100 studies showing captions improve comprehension of, attention to and memory for a video.
See the numbersWHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS
Turn the words
on.
Captions help far more people than they were made for.
Same-language subtitles began as a way in for deaf viewers. A 2015 review of more than 100 studies found they improve understanding of, attention to and memory for a video, for hearing viewers too.
CC captions on
Who gains most
THE SHORT ANSWER
Captions help
almost everyone.
They were built for deaf viewers.
Studies keep finding gains for hearing viewers as well.
LEARNING
Reading along helps
In a US trial of 70 second and third graders, those who watched with captions scored better on reading skills, from defining words to sounding out new ones.
Who gains most
LANGUAGES
Use the film's own language
Dutch viewers adapted to Scottish and Australian English better with English subtitles, and worse with Dutch ones.
How to use themWHO GAINS MOST
Who is
watching?
Pick a viewer to see what the studies found when captions were switched on. The bar shows how clear the benefit was.
Based on Gernsbacher's 2015 review in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences and Mitterer and McQueen's 2009 study in PLOS ONE.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
Captions are
well studied.
One figure on who switches them on,
one on how much research backs them.
4 in 5
Viewers aged 18 to 25 using subtitles all or part of the time
Research by the captioning charity Stagetext, reported by City AM, found four in five viewers aged 18 to 25 use subtitles all or part of the time, against less than a quarter of those aged 56 to 75.
YOUNG VIEWERS · STAGETEXT
100+ studies
Studies documenting the benefits of captions
A 2015 review lists more than 100 empirical studies showing captions improve comprehension of, attention to and memory for a video, measured by recall of facts, inferences, word meanings and more.
THE RESEARCH · GERNSBACHER 2015
RNID estimates that over 18 million people in the UK are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus, about 1 in 3 people.
CAPTIONING YOUR OWN VIDS
Good captions
follow a few rules.
If you post videos, these points help people follow them with the sound off. The line limits come from the BBC Subtitle Guidelines; most editing apps let you set them.
Keep to two lines
For landscape or square video, the BBC recommends a maximum of two lines per subtitle.
Keep lines short
Broadcast lines are limited to 37 characters. In a vertical phone video, about 25 characters fit across 90% of the width.
Write down what is said
Studies found standard verbatim captions work as well as more detailed or elaborated ones, so plain, accurate words are enough.
Caption the sounds too
Music that is part of the action gets a label in capitals, such as POP MUSIC ON, so viewers know what they would hear.
A SHORT HISTORY
Silent films had
words first.
Silent films carried their dialogue on intertitles, which gave deaf and hard of hearing audiences comparatively equal access. When talkies arrived in the late 1920s, that access disappeared.
The deaf community answered with captions. They appeared on US television in the 1970s, live captions followed in the 1980s, and since 2010 US law has required captioned TV shows to stay captioned when shown online.
Questions
Questions people ask
What is the difference between captions and subtitles?
Captions are same-language subtitles: they write down the language being spoken, and also describe sound effects, song lyrics and off-screen voices. Foreign-language subtitles translate the dialogue into another language.
Do captions help if I can hear fine?
The research says yes. A 2015 review of more than 100 studies found captions improve comprehension of, attention to and memory for a video, and studies of deaf and hearing children found both groups gained.
Should I watch foreign films with subtitles in English or in the film's language?
For following the story, your own language is fine. For learning the language, a 2009 study found subtitles in the spoken language helped listeners adapt to an unfamiliar accent, while own-language subtitles made it harder.
Do captions distract from the picture?
Eye-movement studies cited in the 2015 review found captions are read easily, attended to effortlessly and integrated smoothly with the soundtrack.
Do captions need to be detailed to work?
No. The review found standard verbatim captions are as effective as more detailed or elaborated captions.
References
- Gernsbacher (2015), Video Captions Benefit Everyone, Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences (PMC)
- Mitterer and McQueen (2009), Foreign Subtitles Help but Native-Language Subtitles Harm Foreign Speech Perception, PLOS ONE
- BBC Subtitle Guidelines
- RNID: Prevalence of deafness and hearing loss
- City AM: Young people four times more likely to watch TV with subtitles (Stagetext research)