General Captioning Conventions for Videos

Instructions

Inaudible Dialogue

If you are creating a caption file or transcript, you might find that you can't hear or understand part of the video or audio. If that's the case, type [inaudible] in the part of the sentence that is problematic.

Multiple People Speaking

If multiple people are speaking, do your best to differentiate who is speaking and when.

For instance, if Eric and Mary are having a conversation, your captions/transcript should look like this:

If the people speaking don't have names, give each person a number and use that number each time they speak. For instance:

Typing Exactly What is Said

If the person speaking uses colloquialisms or contractions, you need to type exactly what they say. For instance, don't change "I'm gonna go to the grocery store" to "I am going to go to the grocery store."

Also, even if the person speaking changes thought mid-sentence, do your best to document that by using ellipses (...), semicolons (;), or an em dash (--).

Documenting Silence

If there is a pause in the lecture or dialogue that is longer than three seconds, mark that in the transcript in the following way:

"When the Sophists of ancient Greece, um... [Silence]... began lecturing on rhetoric and ontology they charged considerable sums."

Don't Omit Spoken Phrases Just Because They're Visible on the Screen

According to the GitHub PeerToPeer website on captioning, "If someone reads text aloud that can be seen elsewhere on screen, that text should still be transcribed in the captions." This includes a computer screen shown in the video, a paper or book held by someone on-screen, and words on a whiteboard.

Additional Resources

Numbering and Lettering Conventions

Video Accessibility Text Conventions and Examples